Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub

Hi!

This book is set during the golden age of Hollywood. It follows Laura Lamont, previously Elsa Emerson  during about 40 years of her life,
I love books that show you a large portion of someone's life because I always find myself wondering what happened eventually to characters.
Elsa Emerson was born in Door County, Wisconsin in 1920. Her parents own the Cherry County Playhouse and so Elsa is surrounded by actors from an early age. After having a small part in one of her father's plays, she is bitten by the acting bug and decides that all she wants to do is be an actress. However her family suffers loss which Elsa feels very deeply. She marries an actor, Gordon Pitts at 17 so she can go with him to become an actress in Los Angeles. There she meets the charismatic and powerful producer, Irving Green, who turns young blonde Elsa Emerson into glamourous brunette Laura Lamont. The book then follows the ups and downs of her life, with Elsa/Laura constantly reinventing herself and fighting for the people she loves.
I loved Laura/Elsa, and I felt everything she went through. This book also has a wonderful set of secondary characters, especially her children who were all really well rounded characters. I loved too that even the minor supporting characters, you got to find out what happened to them and all of the loose ends were tied up. It felt very realistic and well researched. I was sucked into the world and felt like I really knew all the characters. Something that stood out for me was the treatment of gay characters. Homosexuality was still illegal at this point, but the other characters in the book treated it as being very normal. It was never made a big deal of, jus accepted, and I really liked this.
I wouldn't recommend this for anyone under 13 as there are some more adult themes e.g. drug use, suicide, swearing. However, for anyone who enjoys history, romance and Hollywood, you should read it. I really enjoyed the entire book, so I would give it 5/5.

Thanks for reading,

Ellie

Crush by Eve Ainsworth Review

I think the title of this book is misleading. It sounds like a fun tween book, but the reality is much darker.
When 14 year old Anna meets Will Bennett, she feels overwhelmed with luck. Hot, cool Will choosing a nobody like her. However Anna finds that being with Will is not easy. He expects a lot from her, and she is desperate to keep him. She becomes slowly isolated from her friends, family and counsellor and feels less and less confident in herself. Will mixes his criticism with compliments, and she finds herself changing to please him, to keep him thinking that she's beautiful.

"He could be really nice you know. He made me feel special"

Thats the part that made me feel the most pain, that she relied on him to make her feel good. I think a lot of people can relate to that. He was very manipulative, threatening her with self harm, putting her down and making her feel bad about spending time with others.
I liked Anna as a character, she was relatively easy to relate to and feel sympathy for. A lot of the time I just wanted to hug her. I loved that she used music as an escape. However it took a while for me to warm up to her.
Will was more difficult to like, but of course that's the point. I liked the challenge of trying to work out what had happened to him and who he was writing to in his POV pages. I'm glad we had the pages from him so that we could understand him more, but I think if there had been more from him, it would have taken away from Anna's story too much.
This book made me feel sick and shaky. It was gripping and accurate. If you are interested in dark, realistic YA then this is the book for you. I think this should be a must read for every teenager to warn them of the dangers of an abusive relationship, and to help them spot the signs.
It was a quick read, I read it in a couple of hours in one sitting. I think it would have been less intense if I'd have read it in multiple sittings, but I just couldn't put it down.
I'm rating this 4 stars. It would have been five except for the fact that it took me a long time to warm up to Anna. Otherwise it was an excellent book.