REVIEW for Mixed Bags

TITLE: Mixed Bags (Carter House Series)

AUTHOR: Melody Carlson

GENRE: YA

RATING: 4 stars

I am a late bloomer in discovering Melody Carlson. I recently read and reviewed a chick lit novel she wrote and felt that her style of writing would probably best be suited to the YA variety.I have just finished reading Mixed Bags, the first in the series of Carter House. The premise is actually fun – an aging model/socialite needs money so that she can continue to live ‘in the manner in which she is accustomed’ so she decides to offer her services as a ‘etiquette coach’ and forms a kind of ‘boarding school for future debutantes’. As it so happens, one of the ‘debutante students’ is grandmother Carter’s own granddaughter DJ and DJ is in serious need of a makeover – not to mention an attitude adjustment!
DJ is having serious issues with this whole arrangement and becomes even more skeptical when she meets the other girls.

As DJ tries to figure out who is friend and who is foe – the usual high school, teenager stuff happens – lots of hanging out at the beach and lots of boyfriend stealing. What I really like about the book is that each girl is distinctly their own and have, in some cases, completely different personalities from each other. Of course, there is the ‘usual’ rich girl and the ‘usual’ mad at the world girl – but the mixture of personalities is very interesting and is the basis of this novel – and it works quite well. I like this series Carlson works better as a YA author. Carlson is obviously very religious and seems to find the need to incorporate religion in her novels – and this one is no exception, but, as I said, it works much better in a YA novel, although I would not classify this as a Christian novel.

Mixed Bags is number 1 in this series. I have already started on number 2, but in true, Montreal bookstore fashion, I can only find number 4 – for some reason, Chapters and Indigo have decided they don’t actually have to sell number 3!!!!

So, while I quest for number 3, stay tuned for my review of number 2.