Bellegarde

Gr 7 Up–Lilac reworks 1999’s She’s All That in a pseudo pre–French Revolution setting. Whether this sentence excites or horrifies determines one’s enjoyment of the novel. Evie is a baker’s apprentice who side hustles in couture; Beau Bellegarde has just been publicly dumped by Rachelle, with whom he planned to become “king” and “queen” of the Court of Flowers Ball. On a bet, he decides to train Evie as a replacement. To be clear, this is not historical fiction. Here, “history” is garbled. Zippers appear a century before their invention. The premise of a coed university attended by the urban poor and the aristocracy is impossible. Women in France only gained access to universities in 1880. A reference to “standard French dress...inspired by the queen” is strange when Marie Antoinette was Austrian, adopted English fashion, and faced xenophobia on both counts. Social disparity is at the crux of this novel. Where is the revolution? Evie rejects her honorary title at the ball—and gives it to an aristocrat. The characterization is rote. Go to Jane Austen’s Emma or Clueless for makeovers gone awry; pick up Annemarie Selinko’s Désirée for a working-class teen facing the French Revolution; read Mackenzi Lee for the balance between history and anachronism.