Pop Culture Literature: L.A. Candy
January 9th, 2010
I will say this about L.A. Candy: It’s surprisingly well-written. It’s not the best book I’ve read, but it’s far from the worst.
It’s on par with your basic chick lit, which was pretty surprising because I wasn’t expecting something quite so readable. I’m guessing Lauren Conrad had some help in writing, but I have to give her props for fleshing out her characters and making the book believable.
For those who don’t know, Lauren was the “star” of the reality show The Hills. The show pretty much sky-rocketed into popularity in the past few years, especially because of the rift between Lauren and her best friend Heidi and Heidi’s horrible boyfriend (now husband) Spencer.
The book itself is about a girl, Jane Roberts, who moves to L.A. and is approached about being filmed for a reality show. It’s a topic Lauren knows well, since she first started out on Laguna Beach on MTV when she was in high school and pretty much grew up on television.
L.A. Candy is pretty insightful about having cameras follow you around. It’s interesting that this is based on Lauren’s life because some of it shows some regrets about being on the show.
Jane, who moves to California to work for an event-planning company, and her best friend Scarlett, who is going to college, are paired up with two girls they’ve never met before. Many of the situations are obviously orchestrated by the producers of the show, and Jane becomes the break-out star of L.A. Candy. That doesn’t sit well with one of her co-stars, who goes out of her way to sabotage Jane.
The show obviously changes everyone’s life, too, since the girls become famous for basically living their lives. I was expecting the book to have more juicy information Lauren’s real life, but it doesn’t seem to be written as an autobiography. Which is probably a good thing if she wants to keep her friends. But it would be nice to hear more about Lauren about what it’s REALLY like to lose a friend on TV and have her life filmed for so many years.
Since the book is just the first in a series, I admit that I probably will be reading the sequels. I just won’t be first in line when they come out.
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Pop Culture Hijabi is a weekly column by Nadia Malik. Malik is a former newspaper reporter based in Chicago who’s now making her way as a freelancer. She spends entirely too much time watching TV and reading pop culture, fashion and TV blogs. She also occasionally consumes serious books and news. No, really. You can reach her at info@hijabtrendz.com with “pop culture hijabi” in the subject line, follow her at www.twitter.com/nadiamalik or simply leave a comment below.
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