Where Beauty Lies by Elle and Blair Fowler (Review)

If you liked the LA Candy series by Lauren Conrad then you will love Elle and Blair Fowler’s newest book Where Beauty Lies. And if that is the case, just skip this review, because its not going to be a very positive one. While some people have the ability change media platforms smoothly and with talent, these two YouTube beauty gurus do not have the ability to write a good story.

Two things are needed to create a good novel, writing ability and a creative and interesting story. Neither happened in this book. Where Beauty Lies is the second novel written by Elle and Blair and follows the story of the London Sisters. Many similarities can be drawn from things that happened in the Fowler sisters own lives, and in the London sisters. One of the things I was really bothered by in this novel was that it picked up months after the first, and the first left off on a cliffhanger. Rather than spending the time writing what could have been a great novel about the London sisters being arrested, proven innocent, and the people who tried to frame them and their friends, they brushed it aside, giving it only a few lines to get on with something else.

Skipping the months between the novels puts Ava and Sophia London in New York where they are designing a new fashion line for Fashion Week. Of course craziness ensues, Sophia’s boyfriend Hunter becomes overly possessive and paranoid, Ava and Dalton go back and forth on whether they should be together or break up, and to top it off someone on the London Fashion Team has been leaking the designs making it look like the London sister’s are stealing from other, better known fashion designers.

So far, this to me could have the potential to be a good THIRD novel (I am still annoyed that we didn’t get a novel chronicling all the stuff that happened in-between), now the writing isn’t very good, but the potential for a good story was their… until the last third of the book. To me it felt like Elle and Blaire were just trying to end the novel and do it fast. If you don’t want to know how it ends stop reading this review, because I am giving away the cheesy and annoying envy.

As it turns out, Hunter is the one who has been behind everything bad the London sisters have been through. Going back to the first book he helped steal the money from the animal shelter. In Where Beauty Lies, Hunter is responsible for kidnapping Ava and Sophia’s pets, leaking their designs, setting fire to a house that the London sisters were planning on using, and countless other troubles the sisters have faced. He claims that he did it all to help Sophia because he loves her, but really? It just seems crazy and stupid. To top it off, the man who swoops in to take Hunter down is a man that Sophia had feelings for from the first book, who of course it turns out, is now a rich Count.

The whole novel just seemed overly cheesy, like one of those 3pm midweek after school special from the mid 90s. The writing wasn’t good, and the story’s ending frustrated me to no end. I think that Elle and Blair should stick to their YouTube videos and makeup lines, it is something they are good at, writing novels should be laid to rest.