Rowena’s review of Don’t You Wish by Roxanne St. Claire.

Main Character: Annie Nutter
Love Interest: Charlie Zelinsky (highlight to see)
Series: None
Author: Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads

Alternate universes exist! Perfect for moviegoers who loved 17 Again, Sliding Doors, and The Family Man, as well as the novel Before I Fall.

When plain and unpopular Annie Nutter gets zapped by one of her dad’s whacked-out inventions, she lands in a parallel universe where her life becomes picture-perfect. Now she’s Ayla Monroe, daughter of the same mother but a different father—and she’s the gorgeous, rich queen bee of her high school.

In this universe, Ayla lives in glitzy Miami instead of dreary Pittsburgh and has beaucoup bucks, courtesy of her billionaire—if usually absent—father. Her friends hit the clubs, party backstage at concerts, and take risks that are exhilirating . . . and illegal. Here she’s got a date to lose her V-card with the hottest guy she’s ever seen.

But on the insde, Ayla is still Annie.

So when she’s offered the chance to leave the dream life and head home to Pittsburgh, will she take it?

The choice isn’t as simple as you think.

This book reminded me of a more light-hearted version of the show, Fringe. It follows Annie Nutter as she wakes up in a world totally different from the life that she grew up with. Used to being picked on by the popular kids at school, in this new world, Annie is Ayla and she’s gorgeous and rich and is the Queen B at school. She’s also a total bitch.

She’s a rich, spoiled brat that got on my hot damn nerves. The whole starts as Annie’s Mom gets fed up with her Dad’s crazy inventions and starts wondering what her life would have been like if she had married her ex-boyfriend from the past, Jim Monroe. Annie starts wondering what her life would have been like if she was Jim Monroe’s daughter instead of Mel Nutter. The grass is greener on the other side and all of that.

So Annie’s now living the high life of the Queen Bee at Crap Academy (I forget what the actual name of the school is) and she gets away with everything. But she’s also feared because she’s a bully at school. She’s also dating one of the hottest guys at school who’s looking forward to Homecoming night since that’s when she’s promised him that she’ll give him her V card. Juggling this new life and this active social life is a bit much for Annie and she’s not sure if she likes the reputation Ayla has at school and at home.

As Annie, she’s really close to her mother but as Ayla, her relationship with her mother (who is the same Mom from the other universe but an unhappier version of her mother) is non-existent. She’s much closer to her father, Jim Monroe, who is a total douche-bag but who’s richer than rich. The longer Annie stays in this timeline/parallel universe, the more she starts to realize that she doesn’t like this Ayla girl very much and she wants people to like her so in Ayla’s body, she starts to change little things and those little changes take the notice of the people around her and her pedastal as the Queen Bee is getting smaller and smaller.

Annie makes new friends as Ayla and one of those new friends is Charlie Zelinsky and what a cutie patootie he was. He gets picked on by the stupid assholes at school but nothing can keep him down. He just picks himself right back up and takes care of business. The more that I got to know Charlie, the more I liked him. He was a great match for Annie and I loved how when he first saw what Annie looked like (which is not at all like Ayla) he tells Annie/Ayla that he knows that he would love Annie. Awww, what a cutie pie!

Some things that I didn’t care for in this book was how long it took Ayla/Annie to come around. Coming from a world where she knew all too well how it felt to be bullied, I didn’t like that Annie went along with Bliss and Jade’s crap when she first starts going to school with them. Knowing how sucky it was for her to get bullied on the bus and then to be talked down to every single day from the other students at school (the popular kids) and then go along with it, feeling shit and still doing it annoyed me. The other thing that annoyed me was how she wasn’t upfront with her Mom about what she was really up to, instead of just letting her mother assume she was in cahoots with her douche-bag of a Dad.

This book had a lot of good in it but it also had a bunch of not so good things in it. Things that didn’t have anything to do with the way it was written and more with my own personal likes and dislikes. I ended up liking Annie and loved the way that the book ended but there were a time too many where I wanted to strangle Annie, Ayla, Bliss, Jade, Ryder.

My favorite part of this book was any time Charlie was in the story, even at the end…he was adorable. Overall, this book was good. It was a good summer read.

…and that’s your scoop!