For Money and Love

Title: Mob Princess- For Money and Love

Author: Todd Strasser

Date Finished: February 23, 2009

Personal Book Count: 17 out of 100

Rating: 2 out of 5

Genre/ Subject: Young Adult Fiction

First Line: “Listen, Kate,” Tanner Westfall said. “I don’t know any other way to say this. It’s just that this is the longest I’ve ever gone without… well, you know.”

Summery: Kate Blessing is in high school. After her mom leaves her dad, because he got his girlfriend pregnant, her dad needs to rely on someone to help him run the family business, the mob…

Why did I pick this book? : I am a sucker for mob stories. When I saw this in the YA section at my library, I thought I should give it a try.

Review: When I picked this book up, I was intrigued by it. It just never lived up to it potential. It was very cliché. In some places, it even poked fun at being cliché, but I though it was over the top. It takes incredible suspension of disbelief to believe not only that a 16 year old girl in running the mob, but that her father just handed it over to her, as he has too many other problems to deal with. Maybe my imagination just isn’t that good. I kept waiting for something big and mob like to happen. It never did. So what makes this a YA book instead of a juvenile fiction? With that said, I did like Kate. Mature for a high school kid, but a likeable character. I also liked her brother (Sonny Jr.), Teddy and Nick. I could buy into those characters. I just wish more had happened. I liked that she got the guy in the end (I just won’t tell you which one, ha!) I also thought the ending was logical, and opened things up nicely for the next book. Will I read the next book? Maybe. If there is nothing else I want to read that week, and if it happens to be there. But it will be more out of curiosity about what happens with the characters, and if he can pull it off a bit better with the second, now that the ground work is laid. But I’m not rushing out to get it.

Agree? Disagree? Recommendations? Any insights, suggestions, or comments on the book or format, or blog at all are most welcome. If you have read this and/ or review it yourself, please let me know. Can you think of any books like this? Give me a recommendation! =D