Paper or Plastic

Paper or Plastic

by Vivi Barnes

It's not like Alexis needed the lipstick. Heck! She didn't even like the color! She only did it because she was bored and her friend convinced her to do it.

But while her friend gets off with a warning (lawyer fathers are great!), Lex is forced by her mother to take the manager's offer to work off her crime. So now Lexi must spend two of her summer months at SmartMart (a cross between Walmart and Target). This means dealing with extreme couponers, rude customers, angry coworkers, and Code B's. 

It also means that she's working under a new supervisor, Noah Grayson, and that make Lex very conflicted. She hates Noah for what he did to her friend two years before, but she loves Noah for the kind hearted person he is now.

Add to all of this her overbearing mother, her sister's pageant dreams, her grandmother's advancing alzheimer's, and the possible risks to her softball dreams, and Lex's summer will be anything but normal.

Final thoughts: This is a fun read while in the middle of it, but it begs questions once done. Many of the characters seem very one-dimensional with little depth. We only read about one bad of each type and then never see them again so the extreme coupon lady is there only once. The coworker who hates her is never explained. And her softball hopes are barely mentioned after the first couple of chapters. Additionally, there's an almost literal deus ex machina at the end that solves the main conflict, though there are other problems that are never discussed again, leading me to think there may be a sequel. 

Cotton candy. Don't think too hard.

Rating: 3/5