"My Favourite Manson Girl" by Alison Umminger
Hi Steemians!
Today I'm talking about a YA Contemporary novel called My Favourite Manson Girl.
(picture credit: Goodreads)
This book was a quick and partially entertaining read, but definitely nothing special.
It follows a sixteen-year-old girl called Anna who runs away from home and moves in with her sister in Los Angeles. There she gets a job researching the Manson murders and also discovers the hidden, darker side of the city.
I felt like the plot in this one never managed to get any traction. It was trying to be too many things and ended up being none of them, which lead to the blurb promising things that never actually happened. The fact that Anna was researching the Manson girls ended up mattering so little to the plot that I just ended up feeling like it was only added to the story to draw attention to the book. In a nutshell, this book is trying to get across that LA is a city full of fake, beautiful people doing fake, beautiful things, which is quite the underwhelmingly obvious message.
The book continuously hints at how things are about to get dark and dangerous, but never actually fully takes it there. The characters are all horrible people - which in itself isn't a bad thing - but it made me not care about barely any of them.
Anna is supposed to be this "troubled" girl with a messy family life, but she just never seemed like a real person to me. Aside from this "troubled" persona, there isn't really much to her personality.
Overall I still had a fine time reading this, especially since I was in the biggest mood for a contemporary. Even though I mentioned earlier how the Manson murders barely affected the plot, I still enjoyed their inclusion and reading about the individual cases that I barely knew anything about. It's a decent book but not one I'd recommend you pick up if you don't already own it.
Have you read My Favourite Manson Girl, or do you have any better books to recommend that deal with the Manson murders? Let me know!
Happy reading!
xx
ivymuse