Modelland, by Tyra Banks

In a world based solely on fashion and beauty as metrics of personal worth, Tookie de la Creme is the lowest of the low, a total Forgetta Girl.  Her sister, Myrracle, on the other hand, is sheer perfection.  As The Day of Discovery nears, when potential models fight for their shot at being discovered, Tookie plans to escape her town of Metopia.  But on The Day of Discovery, she is chosen, instead of her sister, by a Scout to go to Modelland, and enter training to become an Intoxibella.  Has some mistake been made?

Since I am a huge fan of America's Next Top Model (dirty little secret right there), I am fully aware of the ridiculous things that Tyra Banks does and says, so I was prepared, somewhat, for this book.  Basically, imagine that Tyra took every shred of model and fashion related information in her head, including every single episode of Top Model, put it in a blender, made a smoothie, drank it, and then vomited it onto blank paper.  That is pretty much what you are getting with this book.  The story is terribly slow to develop, with the action not even picking up into almost 200 pages in.  At that point, the story actually did get better.  But those first 200 pages or so are painful, and had me unsure I would finish the book.

The book is marketed as fantasy, but really, it is not that different from reality, or at least the reality in which Tyra lives.  The world literally revolves around fashion and modeling in this story.  Men are merely accessories, and women only have value if they are beautiful enough to sell products.  Way to ruin 50 years of progress toward sexual equality.

I kind of enjoyed Tookie's character, and at the very heart of it the story has a good message, but it gets buried under silly things like SMIZES and Intoxibellas.  The places and people are named unclever things based on things or people in the real world.  A place named Canne del Labra, a person named Evangalinda, a model named Bev Jo?  Come on.  I think this book is really Tyra's fantasy of her own journey into the modelling world.

Apparently, this book is the first of a trilogy, and that makes me sad.  Sad that bad books written by a celebrity will continue to get published, while brilliant books by unknown authors get ignored by publishers.

Honestly, I am surprised I read the whole thing.

I received a review copy courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.

If you liked this review, please rate it (and others!) as helpful on my Amazon profile. My Amazon Profile