Review of Material Girls by Elaine Dimopoulos

Title/Author: Material Girls by Elaine Dimopoulos
Publisher/Date published: HMH Books for Young Readers, May 5th 2015
How I got this book: received it from the publisher through NetGalley
Buy this book at: The Book Depository

Goodreads summary: In Marla Klein and Ivy Wilde’s world, teens are the gatekeepers of culture. A top fashion label employs sixteen-year-old Marla to dictate hot new clothing trends, while Ivy, a teen pop star, popularizes the garments that Marla approves. Both girls are pawns in a calculated but seductive system of corporate control, and both begin to question their world’s aggressive levels of consumption. Will their new “eco-chic” trend subversively resist and overturn the industry that controls every part of their lives?

So I'm a big fan of tv shows such as America's Next Top Model and Project Runway and all of those things. I'm fascinated by the fashion industry, even though I'm not really a fashionista myself, but I do like pretty clothes. So obviously this dystopian that deals with said fashion industry sounded endlessly entertaining to me!

And I really liked Material Girls, it was a pretty fun read, and it made me REALLY want to buy pretty dresses (which is not really the point of this novel). I liked both Marla and Ivy, though I was kinda wishing Ivy would grow a bit more of a spine, but well, she's a flawed character and I could relate to her struggle. Ivy really wants to be a better person, but at the same time, she doesn't want to lose her spotlight and wants to take care of her family and it's hard for her to see a way to combine all of these things.
And Marla goes from a blind rule follower to a bit of a rebel, but the one problem I had with her character is that it never really felt like she was making the decision to go in this new direction. It all just sort of happened to her.

The world that Elaine Dimopoulos has created was really interesting and it made me think about our society and how we're very much a consumerist society and while I happily join in on this, I can see the downside and the wastefulness of it. The whole way of controlling society by giving 8th-graders a career path they can't really change was awful, and to make children that age already work because otherwise they will be too OLD to be in style? Wow. Just. Wow. I did kinda love seeing how Elaine Dimopoulos also showed us the consequences of this sort of program for the kids who don't get picked for a creative career path and the confusion that someone who's not in this line of work can still enjoy the job they do. The whole perception of things is off and it was a bit mindblowing to read about Ivy asking a doctor is she was happy in her line of work, which to her was inconceivable.

To go along with this storyline, there was a pretty cute lovestory, I liked the tentative romance blooming between the two.
Because the book is not all that long, and we see the story unfold from both Marla and Ivy's POV, it lacked a bit of depth to their characters. I did feel like I knew both of them, but I would have liked to have a little more insight into their motives and what makes them the way they are. They have a backstory, and it's ok, but I would have just liked a bit more.
I did like that there's not big happily ever after where the whole dystopian society has been disbanded and all the problems have been solved because of a couple of teenagers rebelling. Because that's just not very realistic and such things take time, so I appreciate where Elaine Dimopoulos left us at the end of Material Girls.

My rating: 3,5 stars