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Diplomatic Immunity by Brodi Ashton

Published: September 6th 2016 by Balzer + Bray

Anna and the French Kiss meets The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks in a romantic and hilarious new novel from Brodi Ashton, the author of the Everneath trilogy.

Raucous parties, privileged attitudes, underage drinking, and diplomatic immunity . . . it’s all part of student life on Embassy Row.

Piper Baird has always dreamed of becoming a journalist. So when she scores a scholarship to exclusive Chiswick Academy in Washington, DC, she knows it’s her big opportunity. Chiswick offers the most competitive prize for teen journalists—the Bennington scholarship—which would ensure her acceptance to one of the best schools in the country.

Piper isn’t at Chiswick for two days before she witnesses the extreme privilege of the young and wealthy elite who attend her school—and realizes that access to these untouchable students just might give her the edge she’ll need to blow the lid off life at the school in a scathing and unforgettable exposé worthy of the Bennington.

The key to the whole story lies with Rafael Amador, the son of the Spanish Ambassador—and the boy at the center of the most explosive secrets and scandals on Embassy Row. Rafael is big trouble—and when he drops into her bedroom window one night, asking for help, it’s Piper’s big chance to get the full scoop. Except Piper discovers that despite his dark streak, Rafael is smart, kind, funny, and gorgeous—and she might have real feelings for him. How can she break the story of a lifetime if it will destroy the boy she just might love?

I have had this on my TBR since last year, so when I picked it out of my TBR jar I was glad to finally be getting to it. I thought it would be a quick, possibly predictable read – however, I ended up DNFing this book. I got about 30% of the way through this book before putting it down.

My biggest issue with this book was the fact that the characters were superficial. There didn’t seem to be any depth to them and they were relatively boring within the story itself. We didn’t really get to know out characters on a deeper level by 30% of the way through and it led to me being pretty bored for most of the time I was reading. The characters were very cliche in the sense of poor girl who has to work for everything meets rich boy who can get away with anything – and there was obviously the mean girl who hated the poor girl. It was pretty eye rolling inducing.

Another major issue I had with this book was the fact that the writing itself was very repetitive. The same words and phrases were constantly being thrown at me – if I had turned the 30% I read into a drinking game, I probably would have been on the floor, it was that bad. I was constantly being reminded that she went to the same school as the rich kids but was on a different planet and the nickname she gave the rich kids (Diplomatic Immunity (DI’s fo short)) and it got to the point where it was in pretty much every other sentence.

I also felt like the plot took too long to actually kick off with something interesting. By 30% she was just getting an idea of what she wanted to do to achieve her goal within the book and, for me, that was way too long an amount of time to slowly start introducing the point of the book. Had the characters been developed at the beginning of the book to then support the late plot introduction, it wouldn’t have been so bad. As it was, the characters were very 2D and the plot itself lacking.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed with this book. I do have some of Ashton’s other works on my TBR, so hopefully I will enjoy those better. I gave this book 1/5 stars.