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SCREEN QUEENS by Lori Goldstein has been on my radar since the end of last year! I had been SO excited for this book, and it was in the top spot of my most anticipated books of 2019 list! I was so grateful to find this one in my mailbox at the beginning of the year, and I was so excited to read it! But, did this book live up to my highest expectations? Keep reading this review to find out!

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

The Bold Type meets The Social Network when three girls vying for prestigious summer internships through a startup incubator program uncover the truth about what it means to succeed in the male-dominated world of tech.
This summer Silicon Valley is a girls’ club.
Three thousand applicants. An acceptance rate of two percent. A dream internship for the winning team. ValleyStart is the most prestigious high school tech incubator competition in the country. Lucy Katz, Maddie Li, and Delia Meyer have secured their spots. And they’ve come to win.
Meet the Screen Queens.
Lucy Katz was born and raised in Palo Alto, so tech, well, it runs in her blood. A social butterfly and CEO in-the-making, Lucy is ready to win and party.
East Coast designer, Maddie Li left her home and small business behind for a summer at ValleyStart. Maddie thinks she’s only there to bolster her graphic design portfolio, not to make friends.
Delia Meyer taught herself how to code on a hand-me-down computer in her tiny Midwestern town. Now, it’s time for the big leagues–ValleyStart–but super shy Delia isn’t sure if she can hack it (pun intended).
When the competition kicks off, Lucy, Maddie, and Delia realize just how challenging the next five weeks will be. As if there wasn’t enough pressure already, the girls learn that they would be the only all-female team to win ever. Add in one first love, a two-faced mentor, and an ex-boyfriend turned nemesis and things get…complicated.

While this book was at the top of my most anticipated releases on 2019, I’m sad to say that it didn’t meet my expectations. The first few chapters started off very strong, but I found the majority of the book to be quite boring. Not all of the scenes were relevant to the overall flow of the story, and it didn’t solve the main problem until the very very end of the story.

The characters in this novel were just OK to me. I really loved how the three main characters all came from different cultures and backgrounds, but I would have loved to have explored that aspect of the story even more. Other than that, the characters weren’t anything special. They seemed like the basic, teenage female characters that you can find in a lot of other YA novels. I couldn’t seem to connect with the characters as much as I would have liked to, and I also felt like I didn’t get to know them enough within this 350 page book. However, they did develop and form a strong friendship throughout the story, which I enjoyed immensely.

I loved all of the tech aspects in the story. This book had a high focus on silicone valley and the tech industry in the female perspective, which I found super interesting to read about. One of my favourite scenes in the book was when they talked to famous female CEO’s, as I found their mature perspectives interesting.

The family dynamics within this book was definitely my favourite part to read about! I loved seeing the very different relationships that the three main characters had with their parents or siblings. This book truly represented several variations of teen + family interactions/relationships, which I really enjoyed reading about.

The main issue I had with this story was the writing. I found it super hard to follow most of the time, and I had a hard time visualizing a lot of the scenes. At times it was very choppy and didn’t make much sense. I also really disliked the third person writing style used in this book, as it felt like it was written in first person but then changed to third throughout the chapter. I think this book would have been way better had it been written in first person perspective with three different POVs (one for each of the main characters).

If you are looking for a book that features strong female teens trying to breakthrough the tech-industry, I recommend picking this one up! Overall, I rated it 3.25/5 stars.

Thanks to Penguin Teen Canada for the ARC!

Good Night Book Owls!