Rich Girl, Poor Girl - Lesley Lokko

Nic, Caryn and Tory: three girls who form a friendship that should last a lifetime. Nic is the daughter of a white Zimbabwean business tycoon. Despite a life of jaw-dropping wealth and privilege, all she really wants is a bit of attention from daddy. Caryn never met her father - but growing up on a tough London sink estate, she had other things to worry about. Like getting out and moving on. Tory just yearns for some space to be herself. Living in the shadow of your dead sister is tough, particularly when she seemed to be everything you're not. Then beautiful, ruthless Estelle McKenzie appears on the scene. Estelle has a secret - and one way or another, she's going to make each woman pay a very high price for it.

Why read? - I have read one of her previous books and really enjoyed it and this one looked just as good.  

This book had a very promising start, it started well and it gripped me into learning about the three girls life's. Unfortunately from their it went downhill a bit.  When Lokko started bringing in extra characters into the book i felt like it fell apart.  She couldn't keep up with the six different characters life's and each one who had such a beautifully different life and personality started to merge into one.  She also as most of this book was over a 15 year span it did not really flow very well. I almost wish she stuck to a few years so we could follow the girls grow up slowly over time, instead of jump from one time frame to the next.  

It started well with such a great concept for the storys for each three girls and thier backgrounds and how they intertwined. Each having their own interesting stories to tell, but then as the years jumped these backgrounds seemed to be completely lost. I wanted to find out more about Caryn and her relationship with her mother and brother, and more about Tory finding her way after the death of her sister. Instead we got this odd twist with extra characters all going after Nic's father.  To me it just threw the story and didn't make sense, it wasn't the story i was expecting and went down a road focusing on something completely different which put the three girls in the sidelines.  

I think the secret that she tried to involve in this story was probably the thing that killed this book for me.  If she stuck to the three girls and their lives intertwined with each other it would have been a great book. However she seemed to over complicate matters and bring in too many characters.  This also meant you lost the closeness to the three orignial girls as we jumped between six different people and only got tiny bits of information about each of them.  Another problem with her writing is you could tell she tried to hint at what was going on, and then would tell you parts of the truth.  To me instead of being intrigued, i felt throughly confused. 

It was such a promising book, but unfortunately it was a disappointment for me. I can see why people might like the story, the style of writing was good and it was somewhat gripping but it just was not what i expected and i just found myself groaning at the predictable shallow plot lines.