L.A. Candy
Book Summary
Nineteen-year-old friends Jane and Scarlett move to Los Angeles for a new adventure. Jane plans to intern for an event planner while Scarlett attends classes at USC. When they're hand-picked to star in a new reality show -- described as a PG-version of Sex in the City -- cameras follow them everywhere. As the TV producer tells them, "No one moves here to be a nobody." When the show becomes a hit, the friends have to discover if becoming "somebody" means losing who they are.
Is It Any Good?
The draw here -- as the book jacket with the author's name twice as big as the title suggests -- is author Lauren Conrad's fame as a star of MTV's reality show The Hills. The entire back cover is a photo of her looking like a model. The book, "loosely inspired by her own experience," highlights the staging of "reality" shots but doesn't dish much insider gossip.
Conrad falls into common new author traps (telling rather than showing, lack of character motivation, caricatured secondary characters) but she's not bad with dialogue. Readers will trust her authenticity in portraying the lives of young adults testing their new independence.

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