Candy in Action (Hardcover)

by Matthue Roth (Author)
Key Phrases: New York, San Francisco, Preston Reign (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Hermione Granger's wit...[shines] brightly among wizards, while Candy Cohen sparkles in the realm of mere heroines with mortal skills." -- Elizabeth Breau, ForeWord Magazine

"Strap on your seatbelts [for] a ride...into the world of high society, limitless spending budgets...and incredible danger." -- TeensReadToo.com (5 stars)

Product Description

Candy Resnick is just the girl next door — if the girl next door happens to be a college freshman and part-time model with a wicked sense of humor. She and her best friend Velma jaunt around the world, flirt with rock stars and power brokers, and party in countries that don’t know the meaning of the word. All that changes one night, however, when Candy turns down a dinner invitation from the rich and powerful Preston Reign. Suddenly, she finds herself being stalked by a guy who never takes “no” for an answer. Drawn into his web and lacking direction for the first time in her life, Candy is on the run. Dodging bullets, blowing up buildings, being chased through exotic cities, she fights back with the only weapons she has: Velma, her natural wit, and her stiletto heels. Candy in Action is a hilarious novel with a serious message about the lonely side of being popular and the importance of standing your ground.

Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press/Red Rattle Books (November 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933368632
• ISBN-13: 978-1933368634
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,631,987 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, January 2, 2008

By	TeensReadToo.com "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

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

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars O! The suspense!, December 7, 2007

By	tara. (Simpsonville, SC USA) - See all my reviews

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!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, Not Great, March 12, 2008

By	ZeeSays "zeesays.blogspot.com" (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews

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.