Reveiw: 52 Reasons to Hate My Father by Jessica Brody

Goodreads Summary:

Being America’s favorite heiress is a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Lexington Larrabee has never to work a day in her life. After all, she’s the heiress to the multi-billion-dollar Larrabee Media empire. And heiresses are not supposed to work. But then again, they’re not supposed to crash brand new Mercedes convertibles into convenience stores on Sunset Blvd either.

Which is why, on Lexi’s eighteen birthday, her ever-absent, tycoon father decides to take a more proactive approach to her wayward life. Every week for the next year, she will have to take on a different low-wage job if she ever wants to receive her beloved trust fund. But if there’s anything worse than working as a maid, a dishwasher, and a fast-food restaurant employee, it’s dealing with Luke, the arrogant, albeit moderately attractive, college intern her father has assigned to keep tabs on her.

In a hilarious “comedy of heiress” about family, forgiveness, good intentions, and best of all, second chances, Lexi learns that love can be unconditional, money can be immaterial, and, regardless of age, everyone needs a little saving. And although she might have 52 reasons to hate her father, she only needs one reason to love him.

My Review:
Fathers...it's almost a cliché to have a bad/distant/absent/deadbeat father. It was ridiculously easy to find theme music for this post- bad fathers have inspired so many musicians to immortalize their bad dad in song. So, you have your pick of two bad dad songs:

If you think about it, the author had a tough job in this book. She had to make Lexington Larrabee, a fictional heiress and celebutard sympathetic. But I did find her sympathetic because of the whole bad father thing. I actually found myself hating her father, Richard. (I guess because at her age I had "daddy issues", too) Why? Because Lexington is her father's creation; her failures are really about his failures as a father. Now if you are disinclined to cut a character slack for bad behavior- especially if she's 18- then this is probably a book to avoid because initially Lexington will make you nuts. I guess I'm more likely to excuse this kind of behavior because I'm older and I can look back on myself at 18 and what a screwed up mess I was and accept that this is just the process of growing up. I remember talking to my mother when my father and I were fighting. She told me this: if you do things- especially hurtful and negative things- as a reaction to your father, he's controlling you. That doing the opposite of what your father wants means he's still in control. Again, if you find yourself thinking, "That's so obvious!", then this is not the book for you.

Despite all of the above, in many ways this is a perfect summer read. Lexington's stumblings through life are at times funny. The author does manages to wrap all of the moral messages of a coming of age book into an easy summer read-type book. Yet again, reading a blogger's review of an ARC of this book made me add this to my TBR. This book was July's runner up for the "I Hate This Cover" of the Month. Ugh, it's just awful and because of the cover, the book had gotten filed into my mental "Not Reading This Book" list. I mean, the way main character is dressed on the cover doesn't say celebrity heiress. It makes me think of this song:

Overall Rating: 3 stars (still recommended if you're in the mood for a light summer read)
Genre Rating: 3 1/2 stars (this is a good, but not great book)

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