Review: Envy by Anna Godbersen

Envy by Anna Godbersen is the third book in the Luxe series, which is all about a group of beautiful, young, incredibly wealthy people living in New York City at the start of the 20th century. Envy, is probably my favourite book so far in the series (I didn't really enjoy the first book (The Luxe) but I liked Rumours and this one is even better).

To keep things fresh and interesting, Envy sees most of the characters go down to Florida for a holiday. I think the change of setting was a good move and made for interesting reading. The whole Luxe series is quite reminiscent of Gossip Girl (even down to the 'society columns' which could easily be interchanged to Gossip Girl's modern blog-posts) it has a set of characters who all know each other but are all doing their own things with each chapter focusing on one of the characters. However, I think the historical aspects of the Luxe series keep the books from feeling 'trashy' like the Gossip Girl books, even though admittedly the story-lines are at times a little trashy, hehe. It's all good!

I always have mixed feelings about books where the story only focuses on one character at a time. It's great in one way because the different story lines are interesting and it means that the plot doesn't have to be racing along to keep the story moving. It does annoy me a little sometimes though when I'm really interested in finding out about a certain character and I know I'm going to have to read a lot of other stories before I can find out more.

The character and storyline that I really enjoyed was Carolina's; she used to be a maid for Elizabeth Holland (another main character in the story) but is now trying to make a name for herself as a society girl. This storyline began in Rumours and to me was made the difference between not really enjoying The Luxe and to making Rumours highly enjoyable. I would have been happy to read an entire book about this one storyline!

The cover art of Envy is gorgeous with the decadent dress and the pretty flowers and font. Although of course I would have loved the girl on the cover to be wearing a green dress to suit 'envy'! Often in the book the author described the dresses the girls were wearing in EXTREME detail which felt a little clunky to me but was interesting nonetheless.

The Luxe series is continuing with the next book, Splendour.

Envy by Anna Godbersen (more info here) is published by Penguin and is out now in Australia!