The Daughters Break the Rules by Joanna Philbin

Release Date: November 2, 2010
Publisher: Poppy
Pages: 288
Review Source: Library

Synopsis: (from Goodreads)
Daughters Rule Number Six: Never talk to the press about your parents.

After leaking a story about the family business, impetuous high school freshman Carina Jurgensen is cut off by her billionaire father. Always resourceful, she fibs her way into a job as a party planner for New York's annual Silver Snowflake Ball. But when Carina finds out that the party committee expects favors and freebies from her dad's A-list connections, a choice must be made: Does she get real about her downgraded status, or pretend she's still the ultimate heiress?

Best friends and fellow daughters of celebrities Lizzie Summers, Carina Jurgensen and Hudson Jones are back in Joanna Philbin's second stylish and heartfelt Daughters novel.

My Thoughts:
I really enjoyed the first 'Daughters' novel (read my review here), so I went into the second book with high expectations. Perhaps that was a mistake, because I had a hard time finishing this one. It's not that the writing was bad, because it wasn't. Joanna Philbin has a clear understanding of what it's like to grow up with a famous and wealthy parent, and she once again portrays this very well.

My issue with the book is its main character, Carina. Perhaps her outlook on life and her behaviour are reasonable considering her age and her upbringing, but it I found it hard to be sympathetic toward the 'poor little rich girl' whose main problems in the novel were trying to plan a party and finding enough money to go skiing after her father cut her allowance to $20 a week. Carina acted like a brat even though she knew she should be acting better, and it was hard to swallow.

Nevertheless, the book isn't all bad, and it's probably worth a quick read if you enjoyed the first book and want to continue on to the 3rd. I'll likely pick up the next one, but only because the main character will be Hudson, and I'm hoping I'll love her narration like I did Lizzie's, and Carina will thankfully be relegated to the background once again.

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