Customer Reviews

Candy in Action

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Strap on your seatbelts for this book--you are in for quite a ride. You will travel into the world of high society, limitless spending budgets, assistants galore -- oh, and incredible danger.

Candy is a freshman in college and has a face known by many due to her part-time modeling career. Her best friend, Velma, is from a family with so much money that often times she will fly to another country just for the afternoon. Luckily for Candy, Velma invites her along. It makes for a super-fantastic friendship.

Velma's money and connections help Candy beyond words when she begins getting stalked by a rich, spoiled, and very hot-tempered Preston. He, too, has endless amounts of money and assistants and absolutely will NOT allow Candy to not go out with him. Why would anyone not want to go out with him? He's gorgeous. He's rich. No one has ever turned him down and he's not about to let Candy say no to him.

Velma's family has more connections that Candy ever realized and they are able to help Candy escape to hidden places, dodge tracking devices, create false identities, and get her to other countries without being tracked.

Although this adventure sounds magical, it is anything but that. There is true danger, guns, explosions, and deaths.

Once you begin reading this book, you'll be off and running on this absurd, way-out-there, run-for-your-life adventure. I've never read a book quite like this one, and I'll never forget what it's like to live in the high society world of Candy and Velma.

Reviewed by: Dianna Geers

Matthue Roth uses his superb way with words to spin the story of Candy Resnick, your average run-of-the-mill super-model college student with awesome kung-fu skills and a best friend whose family is "The Family".
Being brilliant and beautiful can get you into trouble and that is exactly where Candy In Action takes us, into a plot filled with more trouble than any young adult can imagine and just as many foreign places as our troubled heroine trots the globe in order to hide herself from harm, mainly in an evil man named Preston.
This is one of the best Push novels out there, taking a leap away from the generic coming-of-age story to remind young readers that action and adventure is an arm's length away and your kung-fu ready fist better be ready to reach out and grab it!

Candy is an upper middle-class girl, with a bright future ahead of her. She models, she plans on going to medical school and is doing very well in pre-med, but to stay grounded she kept a job as waitress at a local eatery. After she turns down a date with a powerful, good looking, rich, famous movie star (or some sort of star), she ends up on the run from the mob. Luckily her best friend, Velma an upper-class heiress also happens to be a member of one of The Families. Velma aides Candy in dodging capturers with the help of her magic gold phone. Candy goes into hiding a few times, one time in a monastery or convent with some monks, but escapes-then leaves for different parts of the world with the help Velma's security detail. Together Candy and her heiress/mob princess friend link up with a 13 year old computer wiz kid, and eventually all ends well.

This book is too ridiculous to take seriously. Candy is not believable and hard to connect with. I'm not saying beautiful women can't do a hundred things, or be good in science-but being in college as pre-med student leaves little time for a part time job, modeling, flying to Italy, studying, and just kicking back with your dad over a glass of wine. Amazingly she knows lots of different martial arts moves-but her besty doesn't even know she has an interest in karate or self defense (other than the classes Candy's mother made her take) and Candy says she only studied it while her mother was alive (its implied her mother has been dead for a few years). Most martial arts enthusiasts will tell you if you don't use it-you lose it, but Candy remembers all her training and is able to out run trained gunman. Velma is a bit more relatable, but she is upper class and that alone makes her difficult to connect with. Matty, a computer wiz kid, is a believable character simply because there are plenty of junior code-slingers that hang out in chat rooms all day. Candy's father is a nice guy in the story, handsome and a doctor-but he is also a Doogie Howser which made his back story inorganic and more complicated than it needed to be. There were too many characters in this story, most of which were not relatable and not well developed to make an impact.

The setting of this book jumps around so much it is difficult to keep track. They are on a snow covered mountain with some monks, they are in Italy, back in New York, or in Prague at different times in book that is not all that long. Some how they end up on a volcano, a setting I found most odd (I am a geologist). Unless you are Icelandic and are a volcano parachuter, even volcanologists generally do have the ability to stand volcanic temperatures without proper FRC clothing. Candy also brings you into flash backs, one where she has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom-but these flash back do not further the present story. Because of the flash backs, I was pulled from the present setting and had a difficult time placing myself back in the moment.

The novel is not well-written. I cannot put my finger on what exactly makes it this way, I would compare the wording to the Twilight Novels.

Although I thought this book was a ridiculous waste of time, it might make a decent graphic novel or pilot for a CW Show.

Candy is the girl we all want to be: smart, beautiful, popular, and seemingly cold as ice. She runs with the pretty people all over the globe, mostly her wealthy friend, Velma. Although her parents are wealthy, she chooses to life on her own economic means. She goes to college, works part-time as a waitress, and part-time as a model. Where love is concerned, she makes herself as unavailable as possible. She is aware of her good lucks and effect on men and uses it to full advantage.

All seems kosher until she achieves the ultimate celebrity dream and meets her own personal stalker, a rich man named Preston with access to all sorts of transportation and manpower. He wants to hunt her down and force her to date him. When she refuses, he brings in manpower. Candy is equally determined not to date him and runs around the globe trying to avoid him. Oh, and did I mention she knows kung fu?

About the same time, she meets her soulmate, Matty. What really sucks is she can't meet the one man she is actually interested in. Her run from Preston eventually includes monks, computer hacking, shopping, murder, and a meditation on her past and how it has impacted her future.

Candy in Action is an entertaining book, although I found the second half to much more entertaining than the first. Candy's personality becomes more intriguing as the book continues. At the beginning, she seems like just another vapid blonde. I found it incredibly annoying to hear how she was manipulating men into lusting after her. After all, she just rejects all of them. Later on, we get to see a deeper side to her character. She becomes more human and easier to relate to. The trouble is, I don't see who I could recommend this book, too. Candy at the beginning would appeal to the Gossip Girl crowd. Candy at the end seems more like something that would appeal to he superhero crowd. It's an interesting concept for a book. I would have liked to see more depth to Candy in the beginning. Not fleshed out but subtly dropped in. I almost quit reading the book because of this.

The other problem I had was that a I found her relationship with Matty to be annoying. She was almost obsessed with him. And he was always on the internet? How lame. I didn't see what the appeal was to Candy. They were talking a lot but it sounded awful mindless.

This book is at its best when Candy is fighting off the stalker or going through a tragedy. I enjoyed many of the characters, especially Mr. Patterson and Handler.

I wanted to like this book so much, but I spent a good hour reading it and just thought it was so silly. The characters left me cold and it was just so convenient. Everything about Candy's life was set up so neatly and she just was always the best of the best. If there was some big hook coming that was going to really draw you in, I guess it should have come sooner. I had to force myself to get as far as I got, and I couldn't force myself to go anymore.

I switched to one of Mark Twain's neglected Tom Sawyer sequels, and have been much happier.