I am in the middle of reading Prada and Prejudice by Mandy Hubbard. It's about a girl named Callie who is on a school trip to London when she finds a pair of high-heeled bright red Prada pumps. Callie spends all of her money on them and can't wait to show them off to the other girls on the trip who exclude her, when she trips and falls down while walking in them. She then wakes up in 1815 London, and has to pretend she's a long-awaited visitor to a rich family, where she meets a girl her age named Emily and her conceited cousin, Duke Alex. Something that I thought was interesting in this book is the setting. It first takes place in London in the twenty-first century, and then Callie goes back in time into the 1800's, and even though these time periods are very different, I think that she feels insecure about herself in both centuries.
When Callie first arrives in England, while still in the present day, she feels very left out. She has no friends on the trip and the other girls are all in cliques and don't allow her into their groups. Callie feels the need to impress some of the girls, and to show that she is more than what they think she is, and hopes that she may be invited to go out to a party with them that night. That is why she bought the expensive, very high-heeled shoes, which she ends up falling in and hurting her head drastically. I think it would have been better if Callie just acted like herself, instead of being pressured into buying and wearing something she didn't feel comfortable in, because it ended up doing more harm than good.
When Callie hits her head and finds herself back in 1815, she also feels very insecure about herself and again ends up doing something that she didn't feel comfortable doing. Callie must lie and say that she is the long-time friend that Emily and her family were expecting to visit them. Callie is living a lie, pretending that she was born in the 1800's and was a girl named Rebecca. In both centuries, Callie needs to do something to be accepted by others around her. I can see why Callie has to pretend she's someone else in this time-period, where no one knows her or can help her unless she is a person they know, but I hope that when she goes back to the twenty-first century, she will realize that it's important to just be herself, and to be true to who she is.
Callie acts the same way when she's in the modern-day and also when she time travels back to the past. Of course she's very confused and scared in 1815, but she's also very insecure and afraid to be herself, and she must pretend she's somebody else and not who she truly is. As I read more into the book, I wonder if I am going to find more similarities between Callie's actions and feelings in the 1800's and in the present-day. Another book I am curious about is Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and if there are any similarities between the 1500's in Italy and America in the twenty-first century.
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