LitPick Review
The Girl Who Became a Beatle was written by Greg Taylor. The story revolves around a fairly average, if melodramatic teenager named Regina Bloomsbury, living in the small town of Twin Oaks where she is the lead singer of a struggling Beatles-esque style band, The Caverns. When it finally collapses in the wake of inter-band drama, she wishes it could simply have gone as well as the band hers is inspired by, The Beatles. The following day, it has. She is quickly thrown into the star life, a major shock to her old self, who retains memories of only her past life. Not this new one where The Beatles have been entirely replaced by The Caverns. She struggles not only to comprehend this but to cope with her new fame, guilt from replacing The Beatles and surprising animosity from bandmates. She gets a few hints from the one who granted her wish, Fairy Godmother, but is left largely to figure it out herself. She finds she has been nominated for several Grammys for Beatles songs and that, should she accept one, she seals herself in this reality forever. Tension escalates leading up to the Grammys due to her inability to deal with this new world. In the end, things seem to fall together and she makes the choice to return to her old life, though with the experience gained in her alternate one.
Opinion:
When I said the story revolves around Regina Bloomsbury, I meant utterly revolves around. Every single change in her emotion is parroted back through poorly conceived slang use thats a decade ahead of the Beatles and many too far behind to be taken seriously by modern readers. A couple examples are that hideous Y added to make word adjectives and frequent substitution of Moi for Me. And to quote one of the tired similes from the very book, her emotions change Like a roller coaster. She frequently plans to plan what shell do, but files it away for later and is swept up by whatever she happens to be doing in this poorly crafted alternate world. (She Loves You was changed to He Loves You, unacceptable to any Beatles fan). The way she goes about interacting with the many stock characters is incredibly predictable, and droning. One gem that appeared, however, was the limo driver, Abernathy, who becomes an unexpected confidant and is later revealed as the mastermind Fairy Godfather, rather than Godmother. This, and how this wish world works, is revealed unfortunately late, and thus the middle third of the book is left awkward and unexplained. Even when the setup is explained by Abernathy, the transition is more awkward, having an everything is better now feel. She came to no real realizations here, the decision to go back to her old life was just as much chance as any of her mood swings. The portrayal of Reginas trial was ineffective, and reading it like listening a teenager whine for 3 hours.