Brooklyn Girls: Angie by Gemma Burgess

About the book

Brooklyn Girls: Angie (Aka Love and Chaos) is a young/ new adult novel by Gemma Burgess. The book was published by Quercus on 6^th March and is 320 pages long. I received an e-book for review through NetGalley.

Synopsis

Angie James lives in Brooklyn, New York and her life is supposed to be amazing. Things didn’t quite turn out as planned though. She doesn’t have a job, she doesn’t have a man and she doesn’t really have much else apart from her friends that she lives with. After a party goes terribly wrong, Angie is forced to look seriously at her life and where she is going. Luckily for her, mysterious boat boy Sam turns up at the right time and helps her figure everything out. But, things aren’t exactly plain sailing and Angie needs to sort her life out for herself and make some really important decisions.

What I thought

When I read the first book in this series, Brooklyn Girls, I wasn’t so sure about the rest of the series. The language in the first book was a little off and it bugged me from time to time. But, when I saw this book come up on NetGalley I figured I would give the series a second chance… and I’m glad I did.

The first book focused on Pia whereas this book focuses on Angie, one of Pia’s friends. Angie is a bit of a wild child and really likes partying hard. Her life is a complete mess and nothing at all like she imagined it to be. She doesn’t have a job, her parents are getting a divorce and she has no idea what she’s doing. Angie knows that she’s unhappy but can’t seem to break out of her usual habits… until one party goes really wrong and everyone has the wrong idea about her.

Angie was a bit of a hard character to figure out. At times I wanted to slap her for being such an idiot and not getting herself out of the mess she got herself into but at other times, I did feel sorry for her. I think she was acting out a lot of the time because she didn’t know what else to do. Angie really puts on a front around other people, acting extremely confident and like she knows exactly what she is doing but it was nice for readers to be able to see a much softer side to her. We are able to see that she really does want to make something of herself and sort herself out.

Even though Angie’s life is spiralling out of control, there is one positive aspect and one that is unexpected. In the middle of a crazy time, Angie meets mysterious boat boy, Sam. They instantly hit it off and become really good friends. Angie feels like she can tell Sam anything and he really does help her get her life sorted a little bit. I think a lot of this was having something solid and constant in her life compared with the craziness that came before. Friendship is a really big theme in this series and it was nice to see that it wasn’t all about the girls’ friendships but Angie’s friendship with Sam as well. There is also a slow burning romance but that isn’t the main point of the story.

As I said earlier, the language used really bugged me throughout the first book as there were Britishisms thrown in all over the place. Luckily, the writing was so much better in this book and I couldn’t pick out anything that was out of place at all. The whole story flowed really well and there were now awkward moments of pages wasted. There is quite a lot going on in this book as Angie has quite a wild lifestyle so it is exciting the whole way through as well.

I am so happy to say that I really enjoyed this book. We get to know more about the girls that Angie lives with as well and it makes me want to read the next book about Coco so much more!