City News

The novel Geek Girl: Picture Perfect written by Holly Smale is the perfect book that adds along to the first two. The book starts out with Harriet reminiscing about her new boyfriend Nick Hieda and the memories they shared together over the previous year since we had last seen her. However her joy doesn’t last that long as her excitement turns to nerves when she gets her final test back. Of course Harriet aces it and once again her joy comes back. But of course her bully, Alexa is here to steal her joy and discovers her diary (yikes!) and openly mocks Harriet about Nick, believing that Harriet is just obsessed with him of course. Harriet humiliated and sad arrives at home to find that her parents are planning on moving to New York right away! Harriet is not so keen about this new arrangement, but becomes excited by the prospect of all the museums she can visit. However it turns out that Harriet is not moving to New York, but an hour on train away from it. Her parents also keep her trapped indoors most of the time to work on her studies with her unpleasant tutor. Getting a call from her old model agent, Wilbur and finding that Nick (lion boy!) is in the city gives her new hope.

Harriet’s attitude has definitely changed in this book. She is now very rebellious and angsty because of having to be shut in her house all of the time, however she is still the same nerdy, clumsy and silly girl. When in New York, Harriet agrees to model again and one incident after another her parents are furious with her for leaving whenever she pleases. The reader also meets a two new characters in this book from Harriet’s’ adventures; Kendall who is a fellow model who tries to give Harriet a makeover and makes her worse and Caleb, a flirtatious boy who causes Nick some grief. I think we won’t be seeing much of both these characters in later books to come because Smale tends to only focus on Harriet, her family and her modeling career. Smale focuses on less influential characters to Harriet.

The book ends with Harriet and her family making peace with each other and admitting that their new life in America was not like they expected and decides to move back to their old house. Nick and Harriet’s relationship also had become rather strained and because of Nick’s departure back to Australia the two decide to take a break, but at the end Nick sends a sweet text to Harriet cluing to the readers that they are most likely to get back together in the next few books. Harriet has already matured a lot more since the first book and still has much to learn from her modeling and life experiences. In this book her main lesson was that she shouldn’t have to become a different person in order to be known in her home life or the fashion scene, she should be able to stay the same and be appreciated because of her own type of uniqueness.

I really recommend this series to people who enjoy reading about strong female characters, fashion, fails, romance, family and drama. I really love this series because of its adorable characters from Harriet; who I can relate to with her clumsiness and awkwardness and sense of adventure right down to Wilbur, Harriet's quirky modeling agent who is always smiling and saying something that will make you laugh. This book is a 5 out of 5 because of its amazing cast of characters and their journey right until the end of the book. I also enjoy that  you don’t have to read these books in order to know what is happening in the series.

Check out Geek Girl: Picture Perfect at the Newport Beach Public Library.