Mirror Mirror by Bridget Balentine

Mirror, Mirror by Bridget Balentine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book . . . this book . . ..

I hated the main character so much I put this book on my paused shelf. I'd have put it on my DNF immediately without that intermediate step but I'd read books by this author before and given them something around 4 stars each. And this was 'free' to me via Kindle-Unlimited. Sooo, I put it on my 'Paused' shelf with every intention of never actually looking at the book again. Until this morning. When I was bored, somewhat, with what I had been reading lately, randomly looked at my paused shelf to see if there was anything there to move to my DNF shelf, and clicked on 'Mirror, Mirror'. My intention was just to take a glimpse then move it.

No, it didn't blow me away. It isn't one of those occasions I put a book on pause, came back to it and found it became super interesting seconds after the pause point. No, it still annoyed me. I kept reading though. And reading. Things were beginning to get interesting, vaguely, and . . . ah crap, near the mid point another character suddenly took over (that was something like strike three, not one (strike one: main character, the singer, beautiful, talented, super rich . . . hates her life, her job, her sex life, her friends, her . . . well, everything about her life. And . . . it drove me mad. She put herself in that position and then complained about it instead of doing anything about it. Strike two: I've a vague feeling I read a rough draft. Because there were a ton of weird mistakes in this book - sentences that only made sense in context (they'd ramble along, a word would be inserted that made no sense there, sentence continued. Not sure there were typos, just weirdly placed words). Strike four: everything restarted. From this new characters point of view. mmphs. (to clarify, strike three was the switch in POV's to a character who had been in the book but hadn't had any of her side shown until mid-point; strike four was the decision to not continue the story from there, but to restart it and show things from this other character's point of view).

Miranda is a gifted talented musician who signed a contract with a record company. They sanitized her music a lot, forced her to hide her gayness, forced her to 'date' men, paid her obscene amounts of money. They did not hold a gun to her head, though, to sign the contract.

Stephanie, from Miranda's perspective, is a prostitute who Miranda meet at a 'meet-the-client' shindig put together by Miranda's 'friends' Hope and Faith (twins who Miranda knew through working with them on their children's show (I mean the show they were on as children, the twins, Miranda was a teen (I think)). A prostitute that Miranda didn't pay but continued to see (and assumed that 'Stephanie' (she assumed it was a fake name) was 'being taken care of' - most likely by Hope and Faith (or one or other other).

Stephanie - from her point of view, was a dancer whose friend dragged her to a party for some extra money. A struggling dancer, hence the acceptance (reluctant) to be dragged along. Stephanie dates Miranda - she's not a prostitute. And I'd say more but, you know, spoilers.

For the vast majority of my time I kind of assumed I'd either a) DNF the book; b) rate the book some low rating. HOw the heck did I end up here? mmphs. Well, I actually liked Stephanie, and Miranda had started to grow on me before the POV change. Then I rather liked - for the most part - Stephanie's section of the book (somewhat reluctantly liked on my part). So . . . here I am. Rating a book 3.75 stars after spending most of the book wonder why it had such a high rating. mmphs.

Rating: 3.75

December 29 2016



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