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Review
The Secret Diamond Sisters
by Michelle Madow

First sentence:

„You're definitely coming to the movies with us tonight, right?” Savannah's best friend, Evie, asked as Savannah got out of the car.

Summary:

Savannah. Courtney. Peyton.

The three sisters grew up not knowing their father and not quite catching a break. But it looks like their luck is about to change when they find out the secret identity of their long-lost dad—a billionaire Las Vegas hotel owner who wants them to come live in a gorgeous penthouse hotel suite. Suddenly the Strip's most exclusive clubs are all-access, and with an unlimited credit card each, it should be easier than ever to fit right in. But in a town full of secrets and illusion, fitting in is nothing compared to finding out the truth about their past.

source: Goodreads

My opinion:

I loved Michelle's Remembrance trilogy and was really looking forward to her new series telling the story of three sisters moving to Las Vegas to live with their father they have never met.

The idea behind The Secret Diamond Sisters sounded great – 3 sisters moving from a small town in California, where they had money problems and an alcoholic mother, to Las Vegas to live with their super rich dad who owns a hotel there while their mum is in rehab. I like Michelle's writing style because it feels a bit like someone telling you a story instead of you reading one.

Unfortunately this book did not meet my expectations.

It started out a bit slow and the four alternating narrators (Savannah, Courtney, Peyton – the three Diamond sisters – and Madison – a girl Courtney's age living in Las Vegas) got really confusing sometimes. It was hard to know which girl was telling the story when I took a break in the middle of a chapter and came back, so I had to flip back a few pages to remind me who was talking.

It would be really refreshing if you would find loving and caring parents in some contemporary YA every now and then. I have been thinking for a few days now but couldn’t come up with a YA contemporary novel I read where the main character(s) had loving and caring parents. In Michelle's book the mother is an alcoholic who doesn't really take care of her teenage girl and doesn't even care if the bills are paid and the girls have no idea who their father is but when their mum is sent to rehab they are forced to live with him – a Las Vegas billionaire who was never part of their lives (and the youngest, Savannah, is 15 years old!). Adrian Diamond doesn't think it is necessary to meet his daughters at the airport or at their apartment and during the whole story he only talks to his girls approximately three times mostly concerned that they won’t behave well enough or “bribing” them with credit cards or phones. I had this urge to shake him and tell him to start caring about his daughters for once.

The three sisters are on the one hand confused and taken away from their mum, grandmother and friends and put into a whole new surrounding where no one cares about them and start rebelling, at least Peyton, and on the other hand they quickly (over a day or two) start becoming whole new people and change their whole attitude.

I had huge difficulties identifying or even sympathizing with them. I could relate to Courtney a little bit because she is more quiet and introverted than her sisters and loves to spend her time reading but all in all I couldn't find one character in the whole book that I really liked.

For me the whole story conveyed the stereotypical Las Vegas impressions people have of this city. I expected more from this story and hope that it will improve in the next book of the Secret Diamond Sisters series. 

For more information about Michelle Madow visit her Homepage, her Blog, her Facebook and Twitter pages or read the author interview she did on my blog.

The Secret Diamond Sisters will be published on February, 25th 2014

Thanks to the publisher on Netgalley for the review copy of this book