The Daydreams

Really loved the first half. I liked seeing the behind the scenes good and bad aspects of fame. This book had a lot of social commentary to say about women in the industry, and the men in charge of it all. I liked the flashback chapters and the mixed media. Once the flashbacks stopped, it went downhill for me. I just think this went on for a little too long. 

While there was a period where everything was trying to pitch itself as the next Gone Girl, it seems like some of that has shifted over into trying to be the next Daisy Jones & The Six. This book is following the latter path but swaps in the early 2000s and television for the 1970s and music. It tells the story of the cast reunion of a once-beloved teenybopper show, whose four stars have all found themselves in different corners of the world: male lead Noah is a well-liked working actor on the cusp of movie stardom, female lead Summer Wright became a tabloid fodder “trainwreck” after the live finale of the show's second season went sideways, the best friend type Liana is an athlete's wife and Instagram influencer, and the villain, Kat (our protagonist) has left the industry entirely and works as an attorney. The story is told in dual timelines, during the show's heyday and as the cast prepares for the reunion, and while it isn't necessarily an especially great book from a prose or characterization perspective (and doesn't actually say anything all that revelatory about the celebrity culture of the era), it is very much a page-turner, easy to get drawn into and hard to put down.