A Dress for the Wicked

June 1, 2019
Victorian-esque Project Runway complete with absurd competitions and bonus instalove. In Britannia Secunda, fashion is everything: The country's livelihood depends on the farmers who produce the raw materials, the factories that create the fabric, and the designers from the Fashion House. Fashion is also a bone of contention between the crown and the Reformists Party, whose members think it has become too elitist. Country girl Emmy Watkins, whose semidisgraced single mother runs a pub, is a born designer who loves fashion, so when it is announced that the Fashion House Interview will be open to a contestant from a rural area, she is determined to try out. The worldbuilding ranges from sloppy (cashmere from sheep?) to contrived (in a fashion-obsessed kingdom with a steady stream of accomplished designers churned out of the interviews, no other design houses exist, and Emmy is the first person to truly innovate). The girls competing in the interview lack substance (Ky is half Japanese and half white, making her stand out in this very white world; Alice is rich and mean; Kitty is rich and kind; Cordelia is unusual for wearing trousers) while Emmy is pure trope (plucky, innately talented, sharp enough to see that fashion is corrupt) and falls for the first pretty boy she meets. Props for lots of ridiculous fashion that seems insane enough to be couture, but that's about all that works. A high-concept debut that needs much tighter stitching. (Fantasy. 12-16)

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July 19, 2019

Gr 7 Up-Emmy Watkins grew up in the country town of Shy, Avon-upon-Kent, where she and her mother run a pub. Emmy loves the beauty and quietness of her life in Shy, but yearns for more. She's a fashion designer, and dreams of joining the prestigious Fashion House in the city. Madame Jolène, Europe's fashion muse, runs the house and designs for the Crown. Every year the Fashion House invites five worthy contestants to participate in an Interview; they live at the Fashion House and participate in three challenges. Whoever wins may be invited to work at the Fashion House. Emmy never would have been chosen, but the Reformists Party is pressuring Madame Jolène to have a participant from the country, in order to push their agenda. Emmy faces adversity from her arrival a-she does not receive the welcome letter her roommate Sophie got, and Tilda, the maid assigned to Emmy, does not wake her up for her first day. Emmy will not give up-she loves to design, it is where she feels most like herself, her sketches spring from her heart. Readers will root for Emmy to overcome the difficulties put in her way, and help move Avon-upon-Kent to a more inclusive place for blooming fashion designers. VERDICT A beautiful debut, recommended for school and library collections where Kiera Cass's Selection series is well liked. -Gretchen Schulz, Schaumburg Township District Library, IL

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019
Grades 7-10 When Emmy Watkins is chosen as one of the girls to compete in Madame Jol�ne's Fashion House's prestigious design competition, she is under no illusions as to why she is there. Most of the girls competing are titled and educated and have trained their whole lives for this?some have parents who bought their daughters' ways into the competition. But Madame Jol�ne has been accused of losing touch with the common people, and Emmy, a country girl from the town of Shy, has been selected to disprove the rumors. Though she's still determined to succeed in the design competition and learn what she can, Emmy loses valuable time performing press duties to save Madame Jol�ne's reputation and faces unfriendliness and even sabotage from inside the house. But as Emmy navigates the unfamiliar and treacherous world of fashion, her dreams of becoming a designer seem both closer and farther away than ever before. Set in a Victorian London-like past, this blends competition and cooperation for compelling drama. A unique debut with plenty of flair.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)