Review for “Vain” by Fisher Amelie

Star Rating: 3 out of 5

Full of action, romance and excitement, “Vain” keeps one on your toes and also has you reaching for tissues. With this in mind, the synopsis of this book does not do any justice to the main characters or the plot line. It basically tells why the main character is vain, and it does not actually tell you what happens in the book. Fisher Amelie talked about why the book was named Vain because the main character, Sophie Price, is a vain character. But, she did not really give any information about the main topic of the book. So, to see what the book was about, I read the first couple of chapters to see if it was interesting, and I thought it was, so I decided to read it, and I was surprised at the turn this book had made.

Sophie Price is not an average girl. Her parents have loads of money, and she takes that for granted every day. One night, she gets caught doing drugs. Since it was her second offense, she has to go to court, and the judge gave her a choice: either she goes to jail for a couple of months, or she goes to Africa and helps out at an orphanage. Sophie chooses the latter. Vain is all about how Sophie matures and gets her life together. She finally realizes that life is not all about partying and spending her parents money–it is about making herself happy.

Sophie also meets a love interest in Uganda. He goes by Dingane, and there are some sparks flying between them. Alas, the romance was not described very well. There should have been more detail about how their relationship progressed because they have such an interesting relationship. It could have been explained a lot better than it was. For example, Sophie and Dingane could have had more romantic scenes, and they could have had more descriptive words to show how intense their love was for each other. Because of this, Amelie could have used more descriptive words for their relationship.

One thing I hated was that Amelie left a huge part of the book unexplained. If you are going to be an author, you need to know that you cannot mention a huge plot twist, and not have it be explained later in the book. The news was that Dingane got a girl pregnant in the past, and Sophie never even asked him about it. After the statement was but into the book, there was no mention or discussion about the pregnancy or the girl later in the book. I mean, this news was so big it could have have changed some of the things that happened later in the book. It was that big, and it was left unexplained.  I hated that I never learned about what happened, and it made me so upset. You just cannot do that.

Overall, this book showed a lot about finding who you are and also showed there is a lot more to happiness than being wealthy. You honestly just have to surround yourself with people that make you happy, and you should be all set.

Vain shows that concept very well, which is why it was, overall, a decent book.