I love retellings of older stories: give me '10 Things I Hate About You' to watch, or 'Circe' to read any day of the week. The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp is a modern retelling of Vanity Fair. Looking back, maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read Vanity Fair in the first place, and could come into this book as something building upon the original story, but I just found it a bit ... lacking?
Becky Sharp's just *almost* won Big Brother, and now she's out of the BB House she's determined to build upon her fledgling fame. An orphan, the only person she has as 'family' is a woman called Babs who's determined to squeeze as much money out of her as possible. Becky stays friends with the winner of Big Brother, a girl named Amanda who was (unlike Becky) born into a very rich family. The whole story is about Becky's attempts to woo rich men into marriage (or at least a roof over her head and some presents thrown into the mix) and climb as high as possible on the social ladder.
I really couldn't gt on board with this book. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't read Vanity Fair or if it's because I have some kind of need to like the main character of a book, but this was a 1 star read for me. I felt as though the plot didn't really add up - it was more of a series of events in Becky's life that just didn't flow together, and the whole thing seemed disjointed. The moments of tension didn't hit the spot with me because I felt so apathetic towards the characters that I didn't really care if things went downhill for them.
This isn't one I'd really recommend unless you've read Vanity Fair, as hopefully knowing the storyline for that might fill in some of the plot holes of this book.
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