Book Review: Rumors by Anna Godbersen

Rumors

by Anna Godbersen
Series: Luxe #2
Published: June 3, 2008
Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance, Young Adult
Format: eBook (423 pages)
Source: Library

As old friends become rivals, Manhattan's most dazzling socialites find their futures threatened by whispers from the past. In this delicious sequel to "The Luxe," nothing is more dangerous than a scandal . . . or more precious than a secret.

Spoiler free even if you haven’t read the first book in this series.

Gossip Girl in 1899 continues.  The pace felt slower in Rumors than it did in the first book, The Luxe. The first book had one main story line that was told from many points of view, but Rumors had lots of divergent story lines that really slowed the pace down. We’d get to read a very tiny part of one story line, then the next, then the next and the story kind of inched along. I liked that we got to see Western life and how it contrasted to life in New York. I liked the characters a lot at the beginning, but as we got to the end I didn’t feel like they acted like real people anymore. I mean, they made some weird decisions that took the drama to a whole new level and it’s entertaining to say the least, but it didn’t feel realistic. Instead of each character being a little good and a little evil, they started to polarize into camps of good and bad characters. I kind of miss the complexity that the characters had in the first book. And Anna Godbersen leaves a mean cliff-hanger at the end. Overall, it was still entertaining and I want to know what happens next.

Content Rating: Medium, for a sex scene that has some details to it, but it was vague enough that it seemed PG-13 still.