2/50 Dirty Girls on Top - Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Dirty Girls on Top is Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's sequel to her highly successful debut novel The Dirty Girls Social Club. Dirty Girls on Top reunites the sucias (dirty girls), Rebecca, Sara, Lauren, Usnavys, Elisabeth, and Cuicatl, six affluent friends in their thirties who bonded in college and continue to meet up once a year in order to reconnect.
Dirty Girls on Top picks up five years after the first novel which ended (in typical chick-lit fashion) with all of the women on either a personal or professional high. But five years later problems have started to crop up. The girls are either being cheated on or are the ones doing the cheating and the novel (which switches around with the POV depending on the story they are following) shows how they work to get back on top.
While this is fun, easy-to-read chick lit (or rather chica lit) it also deals with issues such as domestic abuse, racism, rape, eating disorders (of both the overeating and undereating kind), machismo culture, homosexuality, sex (or the lack of it) and a whole host of other issues. It's actually refreshing to read a light-hearted novel that still manages to incorporate the kind of issues that most people deal with on a daily basis rather than one that just talks about shopping and getting a boyfriend (although Dirty Girls on Top is full of that stuff too).
It is also refreshing to see Latinas being portrayed as being from a diverse set of ethnic backgrounds and not as a monolith. The women, while all Latina, represent several different cultures. They are black, white, brown, biracial, Jewish, Catholic, Puerto Rican, Cuban, straight, gay, married and single. I can't think of any other book that has so many main characters that come from completely different social and ethnic backgrounds.
The one problem with Valdes-Rodriguez's book though is that she tries to cram too much in. While the girls are self-declared "best-friends" their actions (and the plot) don't reflect this at all. All six of them have separate story lines and few of them see each other outside of their once-a-year reunion. I found myself developing favourite characters and was annoyed when the narrative would jump to a different city and a different woman's plot line. Some of the women had problems and story lines nearly identical to the ones they had in the previous book which made their story lines predictable and frustrating.
Still, with that being said I still would highly recommend this book with the recommendation of reading The Dirty Girls Social Club first.
Tags: a: Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa, chica lit
Dirty Girls on Top picks up five years after the first novel which ended (in typical chick-lit fashion) with all of the women on either a personal or professional high. But five years later problems have started to crop up. The girls are either being cheated on or are the ones doing the cheating and the novel (which switches around with the POV depending on the story they are following) shows how they work to get back on top.
While this is fun, easy-to-read chick lit (or rather chica lit) it also deals with issues such as domestic abuse, racism, rape, eating disorders (of both the overeating and undereating kind), machismo culture, homosexuality, sex (or the lack of it) and a whole host of other issues. It's actually refreshing to read a light-hearted novel that still manages to incorporate the kind of issues that most people deal with on a daily basis rather than one that just talks about shopping and getting a boyfriend (although Dirty Girls on Top is full of that stuff too).
It is also refreshing to see Latinas being portrayed as being from a diverse set of ethnic backgrounds and not as a monolith. The women, while all Latina, represent several different cultures. They are black, white, brown, biracial, Jewish, Catholic, Puerto Rican, Cuban, straight, gay, married and single. I can't think of any other book that has so many main characters that come from completely different social and ethnic backgrounds.
The one problem with Valdes-Rodriguez's book though is that she tries to cram too much in. While the girls are self-declared "best-friends" their actions (and the plot) don't reflect this at all. All six of them have separate story lines and few of them see each other outside of their once-a-year reunion. I found myself developing favourite characters and was annoyed when the narrative would jump to a different city and a different woman's plot line. Some of the women had problems and story lines nearly identical to the ones they had in the previous book which made their story lines predictable and frustrating.
Still, with that being said I still would highly recommend this book with the recommendation of reading The Dirty Girls Social Club first.
Tags: a: Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa, chica lit