Review: Rival by Sara Bennett Wealer

May 19, 2011 by shanyn

Title: Rival
Hardcover, 336 pages
Author: Sara Bennett Wealer
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: February 15, 2011
Source: Purchased
Buy: Amazon

---

Book Summary:
What if your worst enemy turned out to be the best friend you ever had?

Meet Brooke: Popular, powerful and hating every minute of it, she’s the “It” girl at Douglas High in Lake Champion, Minnesota. Her real ambition? Using her operatic mezzo as a ticket back to NYC, where her family lived before her dad ran off with an up and coming male movie star.

Now meet Kathryn: An overachieving soprano with an underachieving savings account, she’s been a leper ever since Brooke punched her at a party junior year. For Kath, music is the key to a much-needed college scholarship.

The stage is set for a high-stakes duet between the two seniors as they prepare for the prestigious Blackmore competition. Brooke and Kathryn work toward the Blackmore with eyes not just on first prize but on one another, each still stinging from a past that started with friendship and ended in betrayal. With competition day nearing, Brooke dreams of escaping the in-crowd for life as a professional singer, but her scheming BFF Chloe has other plans. And when Kathryn gets an unlikely invitation to Homecoming, she suspects Brooke of trying to sabotage her with one last public humiliation.

As pressures mount, Brooke starts to sense that the person she hates most might just be the best friend she ever had. But Kathryn has a decision to make. Can she forgive? Or are some rivalries for life?

---

Review:
Rival was a Readathon book for me, and one I have been looking forward to for months. It has been recommended for fans of Glee (and while I don’t totally agree with this comparison, I did enjoy Rival and do love Glee), and I love the cover.

Rival’s main plot is exactly like the title suggests – a rivalry between two girls at a school. The chapters alternate (which I wasn’t expecting), and the book also jumps between Junior year (when the girls had their falling out) and Senior year (when the girls are major rivals with the singing bit of the book).

I like to pick a character to root for in books like these, and I immediately chose Kathryn, though she didn’t almost make decisions I was happy about. Brooke is not my type of girl, though towards the end she does start to learn some things which I approve of.

I said that I don’t necessarily agree with the Glee + Rival recommendation, and the reason for that is the book is focused mainly on the rivalry between the girls – and while this is something that does indeed happen during choir, it’s really more focused on their relationship as a whole (their friends, parties, boys, school, family), and the Glee comparison had me thinking there would be a lot more music involved (and I even thought the girls would be in a show choir). Don’t get me wrong – there is a lot of talk about music and singers and opera and competitions, but the real meat of the story (for me) wasn’t as involved with music as it was with other things.

I enjoyed Rival overall. My preconceived notions about the plot weren’t right, so that threw me off a little, but in general it was a book I enjoyed. The ending wrapped up a little quick for me, but the backstory of the girls was entertaining to read about. I think Rival is a pretty good recommendation for a high school girl looking for a book about music, relationships, and school.

Buy: Amazon

Related Posts:

• Guest Post: Sara Bennett Wealer
• #justcontemporary Guest Post: Sara Bennett Wealer
• Fun Five: Sara Bennett Wealer