Room Service Please

It all starts with a pair of too-tight shoes from the dime store. Ugly, black pumps for Edith to wear. But her mother wants her to wear them so that’s what Edith does. On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Edith goes dancing without a proper escort and is mistaken for a movie star. No one believes she’s not the rising starlet, no matter how much she tries to convince them otherwise. She only wants a fun night of dancing, to not lose her virginity, and to not have a whirlwind of problems the following morning. No obstacle will stop her; Edith is determined to confront the man who seduces her and demands he makes it right. As she performs a role she wasn’t prepared for, Edith starts to find her true self, not whom her mother wants her to be or whom her dance teacher wants her to be, but whom she’s meant to be.

Room Service, Please is a coming-of-age story wonderfully spun through the eyes of a sixteen-year-old from a different era. With vivid characters and a rich storyline, Edith shows us that growing up and away from expectations is as complicated and confusing now as it was a hundred years ago. It’s hard to get to know characters in such a short time span, but I found that every time Edith lost a bell boy I was sad because I liked their charm. Even characters that are only mentioned have their own uniqueness to them. Edith herself was hard to like because she was snotty and selfish but she was also just a lost teenager trying to please everyone around her even when she didn’t want to. I still enjoyed her story and could relate to her struggles of growing up and finding herself. The story was sometimes confusing, the way things are written with flowery descriptions that were hard to tell if they were metaphors or real, how Edith thinks, and sometimes jumping from past to present without much explanation. The middle of the story started to drag a bit repeating almost the same scene several times. The cover is beautiful, almost like a painted portrait of Edith, and is one more thing that makes her come to life. Overall, I enjoyed the story and recommend it to not only teens but adults as well. It’s an easy afternoon read that will have you wanting to know how it ends from the first page.