Anyone who has ever watched American Idol, and that will be almost everyone, will have the immense satisfaction of the...
Written anonymously (by an insider?), this thinly veiled account of American Idol’s first season with Steven Tyler and JLo is a hilarious tour into the world of reality divas.
Sasha King is a recent college grad working on her Novel of Immense Profundity. While struggling on the second paragraph, she takes a position at the Rabbit Network as an assistant’s assistant, but when her boss, Bill, becomes injured, Sasha (known as the new Bill to everyone on set) becomes the acting assistant producer of Project Icon. Since the flaky judge disappeared and the mean judge, Nigel Crowther, left to start his own talent competition, Project Icon is in the hot seat; ratings have been down, and they need to find two judges before Rabbit’s owner, Sir Harold Killoch, cuts the show. After the kind of surreal demands only the most childish humans—stars—can negotiate, rock icon Joey Lovecraft and actress-singer-merchandiser Bibi Vasquez come on board. The novel’s impersonation of Steven Tyler’s verbal gymnastics is so dead-on, so charmingly nutty, kudos are in order. Bibi Vasquez (the JLo stand-in) comes off less attractively—as a driven, foulmouthed hunter, out for blood, even if she’s not sure why. The most sneering portrait is reserved for the show’s host, Wayne Shoreline, a workaholic sociopath who is sexually neutral and whose culinary tastes are satisfied at the pet store. Occasionally, Sasha has a few moments to devote to a personal life: trying to reconnect with her stoner boyfriend in Hawaii, working on her novel (which consists of deleting most of the first paragraph) and even finding happiness tentatively with an LA guy, found by her nosy Russian landlord. But of course, even Sasha knows her life pales under the starlight of the Icon universe, what with the drugs, the sex and the scandal lurking at every turn.
Anyone who has ever watched American Idol, and that will be almost everyone, will have the immense satisfaction of the “inside scoop,” real or not.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-94207-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Amazon/New Harvest
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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