Author: Carla Hanna
Publisher: Carla Hanna
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review.
I have to say that my first impression of this novel was very poor and it didn't improve with the telling. Given that the novel is evidently rooted in Christian faith, I'm hardly surprised by that, but I thought it might be interesting or amusing. It isn't interesting. It is amusing, although I doubt Hanna intended me to find funny the parts which I do find funny!
This novel is not only about a shallow, spoiled, and privileged person, it's shallowly written, with the entire text being very nearly all conversation and offering little to no description of anything (except of people's bodies and faces). Even the conversation itself is shallow and superficial! I honestly didn't know if I could really read a whole novel written like this. As usual, I aimed to try, but I failed. It's kinda funny in a way because the novel is about an actor (at least Hanna has the wherewithal to dispense with 'actress', I'll grant her that), and the story is like a film script: it's all dialog and no exposition whatsoever. Everything is about Liana and she's incredibly selfish. There is no attempt to create atmosphere or offer any kind of imagery or scene-setting. It's all talk (and only talk about Liana and Liana's needs), all the time! She's a child actor who deludes herself into believing that she's "guarded and mature"! Not judged by her behavior she isn't! Not even close. Not remotely.
I was amused by the title of this novel which made it fun that I started to read this on the same day I also started to read Undead and Unwed which also amused me with its title, but that novel leaves this one coughing and hacking in its dust. It's equally amusing that I'm listening to an audio book at this time, as well, which is almost entirely description, in counterpoint to the endless dialog of this novel! That one bit the dust, too.
The first chapter is called "The Uary Months" which is amusing, I'll grant (subsequent chapters are named after months starting in March), but I found a curious sentence on page 6, (oddly, page six is the first page) where the narrator (yes, another first person PoV unfortunately, but no prologue, thank the stars!) talks about her boyfriend, mentioning that his father is a professor of literature in Paris so his son grew up around the performing arts. I honestly don’t see that that follows! I see that it can follow, but not that it must.
The novel is about Liana Marie Durglo (stage name: Michael) who evidently has a perfect life, living large in Hollywood and expecting a win at the imminent Golden Globe awards or the subsequent Oscars (stage and screen awards are handed out in the uary months), yet she's whining constantly about how badly done-to she is! Honestly? The very worst thing that can happen to an actor is that they have to live the same kind of life that the rest of us do, and they whine about their life? I'm sorry but they chose their life, just like artists chose theirs, and dancers chose theirs, so I really don't care that they're not happy with their lot. I really don't.
Liana Marie Michael is on a daytime soap, which should tell you all you need to know about her professional standards. Her costar is Hollywood pretty-boy (and also her boyfriend). His name is irrelevant, because he's entirely interchangeable with two or three other pretty-boys, not one of whom admires Liana for anything she carries above the level of her eyes (and I don't mean her hair!). OTOH, she quite obviously has nothing but bone above her eyes, so I guess that's fine. Another costar is her mom's best friend. Obviously something is going to go wrong here. I have to say, in a nod to full disclosure that I do not watch soaps and cannot stand them. I don't watch globs of TV, but I do have shows which I am or have been rather attached to, which I try to blog on my TV page, but of which I've done a very patchy job so far. This is a book blog after all. Everything else is just accessorizing!
The powers that be in the lives of Liana and Pretty-Boy #1 (PB1) have decided that to make people less resentful of Liana's beauty and success, and to have PB1 appear more studly, the couple must break up, with him cheating on her with some generic "actress" #1 (GA1), so that Liana will garner the sympathy vote. That's the plan, and PB1 is already on board making out with GA1. I guess that tells us all we need to know about him! Liana is really no better, running immediately into the arms of her lifelong best friend, another stud whose name is irrelevant in a story like this, let's face it. Call him PB2, but he pushes her away. Literally. A third generic stud (PB3) tries to bed her, and she goes part of the way and then runs out into his bathroom to throw up and cry, before calling and waking up PB2 so he can call a taxi for her, to take her home. Just how selfish and inconsiderate is this supposedly Christian wench? She can't call her own cab?! What a bitch!
This girl is so ill-prepared for her life that this story has to be a joke. Her mother was an actor herself, so she knows what's going on in this life, so where is her mother's thinking at? Liana is completely at a loss to cope with life and she's seventeen already. What was her mother doing all those years to leave her daughter so crippled? Oh yes! Acting! Liana is whining that's she has taken on too much and is also whining about a huge contract she's about to sign. If you want out, don’t sign it! Then she whines that her mother is making her do this. Why does she never pray for guidance? None of her life is about her god! Instead, it's all about guys. She cannot survive without having some guy to cling to. What a weak and vacuous person she is! She behaves like a thirteen year old: her entire life is guys; she has absolutely no other interests whatsoever! How shallow is that?
I ask why she doesn't pray not because it would do her any good if she did (nothing fails as spectacularly as prayer), but if she's a Christian, why doesn't she, as the song goes, "...take to to the lord in prayer"? She never does. She has a therapist! Again, why? Isn't her god her therapist?! For that matter, why is she in acting to begin with? That seems to me to fly completely in the face of what being a Christian means: she's promoting shallow beauty over character and substance, she's obsessing over her own failures and desires instead of focusing on the needs of other people. Instead of being devoted to serving her lord, she's devoted to subjugating herself to a man, any man, if he feels right. She has a line of shallow accessories she's purveying, but that's fine because ultimately, she's purveying the shallowest thing of all: herself. She claims she's not a trophy, yet she's so into winning that it’s truly sad. When she does win her trophy she leaves immediately, not even caring who else did what at the awards!
And what’s with this "I'm so alone!" bullshit? Is she a Christian or not? Is Jesus her personal savior or not? If she's so full of faith, how can she claim she's lonely? The god's truth is that her religion isn't cutting it, which isn't at all surprising. It's failing her dismally in fact, and nothing is going to fix this: not prayer, not Bible study, not church-going, not spiritual so-called guidance. Nope, the only church Liana actually needs is the Holy Fellowship of Our Lady of the Get Your Bone-head Out of Your Dumb Self-Obsessed Ass. If she's a believer and her god is omnipresent, I don't get how she can be in such a constant state of bleating about how lonely she is. Here's the answer, Liana: you have no capacity for empathy, or for sharing, or for giving, and yet you demand that everyone else give to you and share with you. It's really no wonder at all that you have no friends!
I reached a point where this Christian, who quite evidently hasn't a Christian bone in her body, despite her being a massive bone-head, was obsessing over whether or not to double her twenty-five million dollar net worth. You can argue that she turns down that contract, but this does nothing to do negate her chronic materialism, because even after that she and Manuel borrow a Porsche to go to her high school prom. How's that for a example of show-off, and tell?!?
It turns out that Liana has a pituitary tumor, but even this isn’t the problem it would be for anyone else. She has millions in the bank! Nothing is a problem for her, she gets everything, yet this spoiled brat can’t stop whining about her life! Here's another laugh: even though she's eighteen at that point, her doctor insists upon telling her mom and dad everything about her case without even asking her if that's ok. That doctor needs to be struck off.
One of the end papers of the novel states, "Liana Marie understands the web, but understanding herself has just begun. What happens next?" My answer to that is "Who cares?" This novel sucks. I rate it WARTY, and contagiously so.
