At First Blush was ridiculously cute! Like most contemporaries, it was totally predictable, but I just could not get over how adorable our two main characters, Lacey and Tyler, were! So I didn't mind it at all.

The story centers around Lacey, AKA LaceyBlushes, who is a YouTube beauty guru. First off, I find this world of YouTubers fascinating. I follow a lot of beauty gurus online, and even though I don't know much of what goes on behind the scenes, I think it was portrayed well. And I really liked Lacey. She was a lot of fun and definitely a character readers can easily connect with, especially teens who are getting ready to graduate high school.

Lacey has her goals set when she begins her internship.. or at least she thought she did. Enter Tyler Lance, a musician (who is hot, of course) who recently left his old band to start a solo career. He was sexy, brooding, but totally sweet (yes, cliché to the max) and I freaking loved the guy. At first I was rolling my eyes.. like ugh, THIS guy. Who does he think he is? But he quickly won me over once he dropped the moodiness and started opening up to the YouTube interns.

As Lacey slowly begins to fall for Tyler, he begins to open her eyes to a different kind of future. And it's not only him who plays a role in her journey. It's her internship, family, and the friends she gains along the way. I enjoyed all of the characters in this book! I wish we got to know a little more about the other YouTube interns (we still see them a lot) but yea, everyone was interesting!

The pacing of the story was a little off. It almost felt as if some dialogue was missing at times? But overall, Beth Ellyn Summer's writing was great! She created a fun coming-of-age story, and the premise was made interesting by bringing YouTube into the story. Even if you aren't a YouTube sensation, I'm positive you will find a way to relate to Lacey's story!

Everything wraps up nicely. Honestly, it was a little far fetched since Tyler is this huge musician, but it was still sweet. I loved how Lacey was able to find herself outside of her online persona. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys contemporaries!

This was a quick read for me as in I couldn't stop reading it. I even stayed up late just to finish it. A little bit of it reminded me of Lauren Condrad's book series with the internship but instead of being on television, Lacey is a beauty vlogger. Her and three other vloggers get the chance to follow around a musician who is trying to go solo. I loved every minute of it. Even when poor Lacey had to deal with feedback from her fans and of course Tyler's fans. I highly recommend this to read for anyone who loves beauty, music, youtube and of course two people learning who they really are. I loved it and already want to reread it again. Also the cover of the book is beautiful!

Lacy lives for her YouTube channel and dreams of reaching that one million subscriber mark. She is one of three YouTubers selected for a summer internship at On Trend Magazine. Her job will be to rep the products from a sponsor selected by the magazine and to help with the image makeover for brooding pop star, Tyler. She wants her channel be the next big thing, but what price is she willing to pay?

I LOVE romances like this. When I was reading it, I kept getting that Jennifer E Smith vibe, and well, I adore all that is JES. So, definitely a good thing. The story was just so adorable, and I found myself suffering from endless smiles.

"It's sort of important to know when something's over."
"Maybe I didn't want it to end."

Lacy was a very likable MC. She was goal orientated, but very caring. She didn't want to step on others or exploit people to get what she wanted.  She had a desire to earn her accolades, and I totally respected and admired that. She also probably cared too much. Lacy was often weighed down by other people's problems or opinions, and realizing this was an important part of her journey as she defined herself during this story. I liked that she was a work in progress and grew so much during this book. She had to experience those missteps to grow and change for the better, as that is part of real life.

"No. You're the good kind of unexpected. Like when you smell that awesome sunblock smell in the deal of winter, or you eat a chocolate Easter egg in the fall."

There were quite a few characters, who contributed to this story's success for me. Tyler was complicated, but there were so many super-cute-sweet moments between these two. I think I giggled like a 13-year-old a time or two. I am just a sucker for this sort of stuff. I loved Kendall as well. She was a great mentor to Lacy, and was almost like her fairy godmother, in that she guided her, while also gifting Lacy with great opportunities. I consider both On Trend and Primetime Tonight characters as well. There was a certain energy associated with these two locals in the story, and there was usually something interesting and fun going on there. It is not surprising that the intern experiences have a certain depth and were captured so well, as Summer interned on both Fallon and Conan.

There was a lot of interesting social commentary woven in the book as well. This idea of fame and the trade-offs associated with that achievement, as well as this idea of compromising your ideals/selling your soul to attain that desired star-status. It was presented from both Lacy's and Tyler's perspectives, which were slightly different, and thus, gave me more to think about. Although there was stuff to think about, but this was by no means a heavy book. In fact, I loved the lightness of the story, as I am a big escape reader.

I am not a YouTuber, but I found all that stuff pretty interesting. I appreciated that way Summer depicted that it's a lot of work, because that is similar to blogging, and I thought she captured the way I feel when I get a comment.

The book blurb mentions The Devil Wears Prada, and I can see the comparisons, but I also feel confident comparing it to Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies. It had a similar feel, as LBDLWL was set in the fast-paced magazine world, but At First Blush was on the sweeter side, as it didn't have that cut-throat element that was in LBDLWL.

Overall: A fun, light, and totally adorable read, which put a perma-smile on my face.

Relevant and entertaining. I enjoyed reading this book. I mean I actually enjoyed it. It was fun and easy to read.

I was obsessed with the cover of this one immediately (give me all the pink). The cover definitely matched how ~cute~ the book was too! I like celebrity/regular person romances sometimes, but tend to be picky about them. The YouTube, makeup, and internship elements were really fun aspects too. This added more dimension because Lacey wasn't really a "regular person" and had some element of celebrity as well. The NYC setting (including a magazine office and late night sketch/talk show) reminded me of Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies!

There were a lot of frustratingly dramatic elements though: classic miscommunication or lack of communication, the main character thinking she knew what was best for everyone even though she clearly didn't, and her being incredibly naive about people who had very obvious ulterior motives. I definitely wanted to shake some sense into her because it was obvious where her story was going to go... of course, to everyone except her!

The ship was strong, but the lack of communication throughout the second half did grate on my nerves. Lacey's friendships and career opportunities flourished as the summer went on, while she found out who she really was. I wasn't a huge fan of her parents but I think they meant well (compared to other YA parents at least!).

Overall, I'd recommend this one to people who don't mind the very trope-y and predictable fluffy YA! I'd especially highlight the makeup, beauty, magazine, NYC, and YouTube parts to those fans, because those elements were strong. I know my sister would probably love this book because she is obsessed with both YouTube-related and celebrity/regular girl romance books.

Let's start this with a plea to Bloomsbury Spark to get this ebook into paper publishing ASAP - I guarantee it would be a huge hit in my high school library! I would hand it to every single girl who loves the "Anna and the French Kiss" series by Stephanie Perkins, as well as the Morgan Matson et al fans. As an adult reader who adores Sophie Kinsella and other frothy, feel-good chick lit, I was completely captured by this story and fully appreciated the timeliness of the YouTube, vlogging, Instagram and Twitter storylines. That's happening NOW, and as I just read in a piece about YA lit being the genre to change the world, YA can be NOW much more easily than adult lit can. Yes, technology may change in the near(ish) future, but YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter are not going to be dying soon enough that this book won't enjoy a few hot-selling years on the shelves before Summer gets her next book out. The main character in this book, Lacey, is a tech-savvy female YouTube sensation and shows an amazing amount of tech skills, emotional strength and moral fortitude in this story ~ these are the characters we want teen girls to see and read! While this isn't necessarily a hard-hitting piece of social journalism, it truly IS a snapshot of teen culture today that wrestles with the line between social media and true selves and the need to balance these. I read this book in less than 24 hours and would love to be able to get it into my library, but for now will just tell students about it and tell them to spend the $3.82 it costs on Kindle right now.......if they will be willing to read it in digital. I hope they will, but I also hope it gets put into a gorgeous shimmery pink trade paperback version sooner than later.

I loved this book so much! Spring has sprung, and I am fully in the mood for all of the contemporary books. This book definitely didn’t disappoint me!

LaceyBlushes gets the chance of a lifetime when she’s selected for an internship at a magazine, where she’ll vlog all the behind-the-scenes deeds about the magazine’s guest editor, but the experience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Lacey finds that while things are going great for her YouTube channel, she is losing her passion for making videos. And to top it all off, she’s falling for someone that she never expected to.

I think that this book really did a great job of portraying that sometimes our dreams aren’t all they’re made out to be, and that sometimes we may think that we know what we want in life, when in reality we don’t. I think that that is something that scares a lot of people, myself included. With my college graduation nearing in a couple months, I’m absolutely terrified that once I actually get into the field, I’m not going to love my profession. Only time will tell.

One thing that bothered me about this book was Lacey’s obliviousness to things that were blatantly obvious to everyone else. Over time, this changes though, and Lacey realizes what an idiot she’s been about many things, and things start looking up for her.

One thing you might not know about me is that my favorite thing to read are fluff young adult books. So maybe my viewpoint on this book could be affected by that. Meaning, I absolutely loved this book because of all the unproblematic cuteness around.

Lacey Robbins is a beauty vlogger. Her goal is to make a career out of it, and she finds herself closer to achieving that goal when she’s picked as one of the three youtubers to intern at a magazine called On Trend. Her job this summer is to work alongside the other interns to make the cover boy, Tyler Lance, look good in the media.

As someone who watches youtubers on a almost daily basis, I really enjoyed seeing the characters as one of them, it was fun and light, at times exaggerated though. I mean, I know it must be difficult getting backlash and you can’t please everyone but I don’t think it could get to that extend? Maybe that’s just me being naive though.

I’m one of those girls, that like Lacey, loves make up and wears it everyday, and it’s honestly so rare to find protagonists that are like that that I instantly connected to her, and of course, it made me start loving her. But putting that aside, she was still such a good character, she’s charming, fun and enthusiastic, I related to her more and more with every decision she made.

The romance wasn’t something overwhelming that I was totally into. I liked the idea of it, although it felt maybe insta-loveish from Tyler’s side. I didn’t really feel they had a lot of chemistry or connection. I’m conflicted over the fact that it wasn’t something I kept wanting to see more of, I was more interested on how she was going to deal with her career and the choices she’d have to make than to see how she’d work things out with Tyler, and I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. However, how it progressed was enjoyable and very cute.

Tyler was a fun character, I liked him overall, but he’s at times somewhat gullible and a little naive when it comes to his family. So even though I liked him, he frustrated me to no end as well.

The writing was something I really enjoyed, the only thing I wish we could have seen more of is Lacey and Cynth’s friendship, but other than that everything was really fun and cute to read, I loved it.

This will go live on my blog on April 10. Kellyvision.wordpress.com

Lacey is a Youtube star who's just gotten her dream internship at On Trend magazine. It'll boost her followers and maybe even get her a Glass Cube contract. Better still, she'll have access to so much makeup (her channel is beauty vlogs). And then she meets the celeb guest editor: Tyler Lance. He was in...I guess you'd call them a Hanson-esque boy band? But he's now a solo act with a bad rep. And he's (a) super cute and (b) seemingly into Lacey. 

This book is adorable. I seriously dare you to read it and not smile. 

I feel like this is also sort of everyone's daydream, right? Who doesn't want to fall for a rock star? And this feels fairly realistic (if also totally swoon-worthy and idealized). 

Perfect beach read. Recommended.

I really really enjoyed this book. It was everything I wanted when I picked. it up......err.....opened it on my Kindle Lacey was such a likable character that if she were a real Beauty vlogger I would also binge watch all of her videos. I watch Several Beauty Vloggers on YouTube and everything felt so authentic that it was like watching one of them and getting so much extra bonus content.

I know that as soon as this book comes into stores I will be doing what I can to pick up my own copy.

I received an advanced reader copy in exchange for a fair review.

Lacey is a beauty vlogger of LaceyBlushes on Youtube and gets chosen as an intern for On Trend Magazine for the summer, along with two other vloggers with different niches. She is hoping that if she does well she can gain more followers and eventually get a contract with Glasscube, so she can get sponsors and a production staff. She is hoping the client they will be working with is a woman that loves makeup, but they end up with a rockstar who is trying to make his comeback after leaving his band. Tyler comes off as standoffish and arrogant in their first meeting but as time goes on she starts seeing a different side. He makes his interest known but she is trying to stay career-focused, even if the internship isn't going as well as she had hoped. She gets her first sponsorship and is really torn about promoting a product that she really hates, and her fans on Youtube start to turn on her. She starts to wonder if this is really what she wants for her future.

I had a really hard time with this one, if I'm being honest. I was initially really excited because I follow quite a few vloggers on Youtube and thought this was a really fun and different idea. I didn't end up connecting with any of the character or even like them all that much. I thought Lacey was really confusing. She absolutely loves her beauty vlog and makes it a point to say early on that while some people have their "fame personas", they also have the "real life" personas, whereas she IS LaceyBlushes..... But then later says that maybe she isn't. Then she starts to hate vlogging...? I know people can change their mind, but that seemed a little crazy to be super obsessed with something and then dislike it in the end. I also couldn't stand how she just wouldn't stand up for herself at all. I will say that Lacey's character did grow as the story went on, and I was happy she found a way to make herself happy in the end.

The romance felt a little insta-lovey to me on Tyler's part. I didn't really feel the chemistry between the two of them as a couple. It felt really forced. Tyler was constantly the one expressing how he felt and pursuing her and she didn't really give anything back. I'm honestly not sure why he would have kept trying. I had moments when I really liked Tyler a lot and then others where I wanted to hit him because he was so selfish.

I didn't hate this one, but I didn't love it as much as I had hoped either. This was a "middle of the road" read for me. It is a clean romance, so if there are younger readers to consider then I don't think this would be a bad one. There is a scene where Tyler is drunk though.

(I've included a permalink to my blog post but it will not go live until 4/4/17.)

I was very excited when I got to read an Advanced Readers Copy of At First Blush By Beth Ellyn Summer! When I read the book summary I knew this would be a book I would like to know more about. I also read this book in one sitting! Summer does an outstanding job with the plot line, characters and settings. You really can relate to a lot of the things happening in this book. Lacey Robbins has a YouTube channel called Lacey Blushes and manages to land a summer internship with On Tread Magazine doing a vlog about the new featured August edition. This is where Lacey meets fellow YouTubers Felicia and Jordan. Then the shock of her life happens when the famous teen heart throb and new solo artists Tyler Lance come in to the picture changing everything. I really like how Tyler is made out to be a real bad boy rock star. However Lacey soon realizes that looks can be deceiving and sees the real Tyler that no one else sees. This story is different then a lot I have read lately. I like how many teenage YouTubers can relater to the struggles that Lacey faces and all the obstacles she is thrown into. This is a really great read. I really like the ending but I will not ruin it for you. So you will have to read it to find  out

Lacey Robbins has built up a huge following with her YouTube channel "laceyblushes" with makeup tutorials and fashion tips.  She feels like she's just got her big break when she earns an internship with On Trend magazine the summer before her senior year in high school. She's going to promote the magazine's next cover star and hopefully get sponsored by an awesome makeup company, grow her channel, and maybe be picked up by a company that launches YouTube careers. Everything seems to be going right until the cover star turns out to be Tyler Lance, a once-member of a famous boy band who is now on his own and has garnered some not-so-great publicity in the year since he's left his band.  Now, he's getting ready to launch a solo career and wants to clean up his image with On Trend magazines help.  Lacey isn't thrilled with Tyler at first, but as she gets to know him, she starts to see that all the headlines about him didn't really tell the whole story, and the two fall into serious like with one another.  Lacey is also discovering that her internship is not going the way she thought it would, and what used to bring her joy, now only seems to bring her stress.  Lacey and Tyler both have a lot of growing up to do as they not only get to know one another, but themselves, as well. This was such a fun read.  I absolutely loved it.  This is a great book to recommend to my students who are big Kasie West fans.  They will love it!

Self discovery, sweet romance, and a plot that wins!

I'm going to admit one very sad truth. It's been YEARS since I truly enjoyed a contemporary novel. No John Green, please (I HATE CRYING), and Anna and the French Kiss left me so disappointed that I almost gave up on the genre altogether. BUT, this fabulous book has completely changed my mind. What a wonderful read!

The story opened with a love/obsession with makeup, and I found myself thinking, "Oh boy, here we go"--including a sarcastic eye roll. Now here's the deal, I'm not big into makeup, jewelry, or even clothing. AND IT DIDN'T MATTER. By the end of the story, I was totally in love with the idea of that world--where makeup is the center of the someone's universe. To draw me, the ultimate stand-off reader to that happy place, now that's a job well done.

The romance was sweet, but not overpowering. As a reader, I was conflicted right along with Lacey, and I truly appreciated that element of reality. The romance also didn't overpower the other aspects of the plot--themes of friendship, change, and family took an equal share. To top it off, I wouldn't blush in the least about handing this book off to my 12 yr old daughter to read. That's huge.

At First Blush will make readers reevaluate their life priorities, and I foresee it ranking in my top 10 reads for 2017. Thank you, Ms. Summer for a wonderful reading experience!

Content warning: Clean.

I loved this book! It was so cute.

Lacey is a 17 year old YouTuber who’s channel is about make-up and called LaceyBlushes. She is chosen as an intern for On Trend Magazine for the summer along with two other YouTubers who have more followers than she does. She wants so badly to do a good enough job to get a contract with Glass Cube and be a professional Youtuber with sponsors and a production staff. There will also be a guest editor and she’s hoping it will be someone involved in make-up or fashion but it ends up being a rock star who’s left a band and is starting a solo career.

Things go along well. Lacey loves being in the make-up room at the magazine and trying all the available products. Then she gets a sponsor who makes inferior products that she has to feature in her videos. She also gets involve with Tyler, the rock star guest editor. Her fans, who have finally gone over the million mark and have started recognizing her in public rebel. She is the subject of nasty gossip on a gossip site and eventually, she has to fight to have her YouTube channel reinstated when it’s deleted due to terms and conditions violations.

This is a cute story of a girl who gets everything she didn’t know she wanted. I loved it!

This book surprised me. I was expecting just a cute fluffy read, but there was so much more to it than that.

A cute, clean(ish) read about pop culture and the lives of the YouTubers.