Fresh New Voice of YA- Eyes Like Stars and Prada & Prejudice reviews

Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev
All her world’s a stage.

Bertie Shakespeare Smith is not an actress, yet she lives in a theater.
She’s not an orphan, but she has no parents.
She knows every part, but she has no lines of her own.

That is, until now.

Enter Stage Right
NATE. Dashing pirate. Will do anything to protect Bertie.
COBWEB, MOTH, MUSTARD SEED, and PEASEBLOSSOM. Four tiny and incredibly annoying fairies. BERTIE’S sidekicks.
ARIEL. Seductive air spirit and Bertie’s weakness. The symbol of impending doom.
BERTIE. Our heroine.

Welcome to the Théâtre Illuminata, where the actors of every play ever written can be found behind the curtain. They were born to play their parts, and are bound to the Théâtre by The Book—an ancient and magical tome of scripts. Bertie is not one of them, but they are her family—and she is about to lose them all and the only home she has ever known.

Mantchev has an extremely wonderful, imaginative, and fun debut here. Her writing is so compelling and just pulls you along through the book so well, even though not a whole lot happens in the beginning. Enough is given so that you're interested and want to continue, but the plot really seems to start going about halfway through. The idea behind this series is so clever and creative and Mantchev does a great job executing it. There's tons of humor in it, but also some real depth to the characters and the situations they're found in. I think my favorite characters are the four fairies that follow Bertie around, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks this. I also really love Nate, who sounds way hot, and I liked the love triangle aspect going on throughout the book between him, Bertie, and Ariel. It was really fun being introduced to this new world and I can't wait to keep reading this amazing new trilogy.



Prada & Prejudice by Mandy Hubbard
To impress the popular girls on a high school trip to London, klutzy Callie buys real Prada heels. But trying them on, she trips…conks her head…and wakes up in the year 1815! There Callie meets Emily, who takes her in, mistaking her for a long-lost friend. As she spends time with Emily’s family, Callie warms to them—particularly to Emily’s cousin Alex, a hottie and a duke, if a tad arrogant. But can Callie save Emily from a dire engagement, and win Alex’s heart, before her time in the past is up?

This book was so cute, funny, and romantic! I absolutely adored it. Hubbard's debut is impressive. I really enjoyed the combination of contemporary and historical, though I do think that there should have been more time spent in the beginning setting up Callie's contemporary persona. But I think the contemporary aspect at the end was a good amount. I loved seeing how Callie changed throughout the book and how she dealt with being stuck in 1815. The romance was done really well, and I gotta say that Alex is one of my new fave YA hotties. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what Mandy has stored for us next, which is unfortunately still a secret and that makes me sad.