Friday Reads: The Start Up - Beautiful Code by Sadie Hayes

The third book opens in Maui, where the twins are about to take their company out to the public at a Tech Conference.   Of course, trouble follows them and their past threatens to intercept the interest of the technology big wigs.  There also appears to be a saboteur in the crowd, hellbent on making trouble.

This is the point where I'm supposed to talk about romance and intrigue, but really none  of it gets off the ground here.   These are kids that have been thrown into a big, competitive world and these twins are out of their league...and the rich kids are too busy pretending they are all grown up to realize that they are too scared to actually do anything.  Add a ritzy wedding into the mix and life gets really complicated for everyone.

I did start to wonder in this one if the author was getting product placement royalties.  So much brand name dropping was happening all over the place.   I also felt that many of the characters seemed to lose steam.  They all seemed whinier in this book and you started to lose any conviction that the good ones were good and the bad ones were evil.  It was kind of a wishy-washy divide.

This book also feels unfinished so I am wondering if this isn't just book 3 in a series of novellas, instead of a trilogy like I initially thought..  

Still a page turner with decent dialogue but nothing is terribly clever in all three of the books.  These would be awesome geek girl chick-lit to read on a beach vacation.  No serious reading involved and easily finishable in an afternoon by the pool.  Luckily, I like the series enough to keep going, but I won't kid myself into ever thinking it is serious literature.  These books are a light-hearted romp through Silicon Valley.  Kind of like a Sweet Valley for geek girls.