MADreads

The grass is always taller

November 20th, 2008 Jane J. - Central Library

I’m short (5′3″ on a good day) and like many of the vertically challenged I’ve often wished I were taller.  Perhaps that can explain why I’m drawn to books with tall women protagonists (and my strange obsession with America’s Next Top Model).  The latest reads in my quest to live vicariously through the tall are Everything Nice by Ellen Shanman and Violet on the Runway by Melissa Walker.

Michaela “Mike” Edwards is tall, gorgeous and could care less.  She’s never been interested in the types of things other women in her office find so fascinating.  She looks the way she looks and obsessing about it won’t make a bit of difference.  Far more important to her is her job as an up-and-coming copy editor at her advertising firm.  In fact just about her entire identity is wrapped up in that job.  So when she is fired and realizes that her take-no-prisoners, blunt ways have made her persona non grata everywhere else, Mike is lost.  After six months of unemployment and an eviction notice, Mike is forced to move back in with her father and take any job she can.  The job she ends up with is teaching a life skills class to a group of twelve-year-old girls at a charter school.  This being chick lit, there is the requisite guy that Mike has overlooked - and a very good guy he is.  But what made this such a good read are Mike’s struggles.  She is funny and often genuinely confused about people in general which makes it all the more interesting as she reclaims her life.

Equally awkward, if for very different reasons, is Violet Greenfield.  Violet is seventeen and over six feet tall and about as unhappy about it as anyone who’s been called Jolly Green Giant for years can be.  Until now.  Now she’s confused.  While working her job at the Palace Theater in Chapel Hill, NC, Violet meets New York modeling agent Angela Blythe.  Angela is convinced Violet can be the next IT girl and presses her to come to New York for a trial run.  Before you can say ‘you go girl’ Violet is swept up in the whirlwind life of a new model.  But living the glamorous life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and Violet is torn between her runway life and the one she left behind.  Sweet and painful in turns, Violet’s growing up is something anyone can relate to no matter how tall.

Entry Filed under: Recreational Fiction, Romance, Young Adult