Hold on Tight: an Insiders Novel

by J. Minter

So this book, the whole series, is ridiculous — and I love it. Five high school guys in Manhattan, all obscenely wealthy and painfully gorgeous, and they have problems too, just like you and me. How adorable is that?

Actually, it's just terrible. Note to the author: If your character wants to find a cause, and you decide his cause is going to be penguins, you might want to do a wee bit of research and find out that penguins do not live in Alaska.

But who cares, right? It only takes a couple of hours to read one of these books, so it's easy to overlook the fact that the author and publisher spent about the same amount of time on it. In fact, the pulp factor is a big part of the appeal. It's trashy. It's hedonistic. It's the world according to teens.

Pass It On, the second book in the series, is better than this one. I haven't read the other four.