Girl Meets Class
By: Karin Gillespie
Rating: 5 of 5
I have read and enjoy Karin Gillespie’s previous books in the Bottom Dollar series, so I was looking forward to reading her newest stand-alone book, “Girl Meets Class”. While Ms. Gillespie’s knack for bring humor to any situation is evident throughout, I found the book to be rather predictable in its plot.
The story is about the poor little rich girl, Toni Lee Wells, who is falling further and further into trouble of her own making. While she is not lacking for money, she does seem to lack for purpose and for close relationships with her family. She goes a step too far and gets cut off cold turkey by her family.
She has to go out and earn her living; however, her aunt gives her the ability to “earn” her inheritance within a year if she can just stay the rules of a contract that is actually drawn up and signed. If she fails in even one point, the inheritance is forfeit.
So, of course, at every turn there is an opportunity to Toni to do something that will lose the money. She has to confront doing the right thing over doing the thing that earns the money over and over again.
Toni ends up as part of a earn your way to a teaching credential while working as a teacher job at the worst high school in town. Most of the students and staff are black and the students live well below the poverty level. Tony is a privileged young (and I stress young) white woman who has never wanted for anything (but affection and attention.) Ms. Gillespie deftly portrays the plight of the young people and the picture is very chilling. On the other hand, she also finds a tremendous amount of humor in the confrontations that arise between these very experienced students and their very inexperienced teacher.
Toni, predictably, ends up in a relationship with another teacher who is everything she is not and this sets up the rest of the, again predictable plot. Without going into the detail, the ending is more than slightly unbelievable and is exactly what most authors would envision as the way to end the story of a rich girl coming to her senses and seeing that money isn’t everything type of story. Unfortunately, I don’t buy it and I don’t even believe that it would be the right way to react. Surely Toni has access to many other rich individuals (including her extremely wealthy aunt) who would be able to better benefit her school than the gesture that Toni makes.
In any case, I did enjoy the book because of Ms. Gillespie and her quirky sense of humor. I really enjoy her as an author and will look for more books by her in the future. I can only hope that she will look a little deeper for her plots and endings in the future and come up with something that hasn’t been done over and over again.
I received a digital ARC copy of this book from the publisher, Henery Press, via Netgalley.
I have read and enjoy Karin Gillespie’s previous books in the Bottom Dollar series, so I was looking forward to reading her newest stand-alone book, “Girl Meets Class”. While Ms. Gillespie’s knack for bring humor to any situation is evident throughout, I found the book to be rather predictable in its plot.