Author: Caeli Wolfson Widger
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: New Harvest
Publish Date: March 4, 2014
Source: TLC Book Tours
What's the Story?:
From Goodreads.com: "Part-time actress, full-time party girl Lorelei Branch isn’t famous yet, but she’s perfected a Hollywood lifestyle full of clubbing, fashion, and the latest juice cleanse. When Robin, her sister-in-law and agent, throws a plum job her way, Lorelei jumps at the chance and auditions to be the new girl on television’s hottest reality show, Flo’s Studio. Enter Colleen, Lorelei’s pill-popping mother, who wants nothing more than to see her daughter win the fame and glory she never had a chance to pursue herself. But Lorelei’s dream of becoming the next reality star is dashed when she loses the spot on Flo’s Studio to a stunning African woman. In an attempt to defend her daughter against what she calls a rigged contest, Colleen goes ballistic and delivers a racist rant on live television, sparking a national media frenzy. Lorelei flees the limelight, humiliated and broke, with her slacker boyfriend Don and heads for Reno where she begins to self-destruct.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Branch family starts to come apart at the seams. Colleen and her husband, Carl, are quietly drifting apart. Darren, Lorelei’s older half-brother, is stuck in Florida working on a contentious film set while his wife, Robin, continues the tedious regimen of fertility drugs meant to help them conceive a child. Desperate to bring the family together again and make things right, Colleen hatches a plan to stage an intervention for Lorelei on the reality show Real Happy Family. Soon the entire Branch family is entangled in a mission to bring the prodigal daughter back into the fold.
Will Lorelei ever forgive Colleen? Will Real Happy Family air their most sensational intervention yet? All roads lead to a seedy Reno hotel room, where a reality TV crew is waiting."
My Two Cents:
"Real Happy Family" is the story of Lorelei, a Hollywood party girl who has designs on becoming an actress but she keeps getting in the way of herself. She doesn't want to work and she just wants to party and that gets her into trouble quickly. Then there is the factor of her family. Her mother has always given her everything she wanted, which is part of the problem.
This book reminded me a lot of some of the fallen Hollywood stars that we've seen in recent times. Lorelei is part Lindsay Lohan and part Britney Spears with all of the craziness of her family and a little less fame. Lorelei's family is so dysfunctional and plays at the center of this story. I felt bad for Lorelei but on the other hand, it was hard to find a lot of feeling for her because so many of the decisions that she made was so messy and so stupid and so bad.
I definitely got a strong feeling of schadenfreude from this book. Some of the things that Lorelei and her mother do made me want to just shut my eyes but like a car crash, I just could not look away. In many ways, this book sort of felt like some of the trashy reality t.v. that so many of us (myself included) get sucked into. This isn't a particularly revealing story but it is a fun ride!
Giveaway:
One lucky winner can win a copy of this book (U.S./CAN only)! Just fill out the form below!
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Follow the Rest of the Tour:
Monday, February 24th: Sarah’s Book Shelves
Tuesday, March 4th: A Bookish Affair
Wednesday, March 5th: Being 5
Friday, March 7th: Kritter’s Ramblings
Monday, March 10th: Words for Worms
Tuesday, March 11th: Svetlana’s Reads and Views
Thursday, March 13th: Snowdrop Dreams of Books
Tuesday, March 18th: Seaside Book Nook
Wednesday, March 19th: Sara’s Organized Chaos
Thursday, March 20th: A Chick Who Reads
Monday, March 24th: Literally Jen
Tuesday, March 25th: Mom in Love with Fiction
Wednesday, March 26th: missris
Thursday, March 27th: No More Grumpy Bookseller
Friday, March 28th: Books a la Mode – Guest Post & Giveaway
Monday, March 31st: The 3 R’s Blog
Wednesday, April 2nd: Great Imaginations
Wednesday, April 2nd: Books and Bindings
Friday, April 4th: From the TBR Pile
thanks for this feature and your concise review. saubleb(at)gmail(dot)com
ReplyDeleteI love Hollywood books!!
ReplyDeleteSuzyQ4PR(at)aol(dot)com
It does sound like a fun ride indeed and I love those colors on the cover. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like an interesting mess of a family story.
ReplyDeleteHmm....I can't decide if I will like this one or not. I'll probably really like it or it will really not enjoy it much at all. But I'll give it a try!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a story that you really can't leave until you're finished because you just have to know how it all turns out!
ReplyDeleteThanks for being on he tour.