by Lori Culwell, contemporary (2007)
ASJA Press, $17.95, ISBN 978-0-595-44116-7
It is not every day that a small press that uses the POD services of iUniverse finds one of its book thrust into the limelight, but Lori Culwell's Hollywood Car Wash happens to be one of those books that are calculatedly coy about being modeled after actual Hollywood celebrities while at the same time blatant enough to let people assume that the heroine is based after Katie Holmes. At the time of writing, Katie Holmes is the wife (or incubator of Xenu's avatar on Earth, depending on who you ask) of former human being turned pod person Tom Cruise, one of most trigger-happy fellow when it comes to firing lawsuits.
The comparisons to Katie Holmes are understandable. In this book, heroine Amy Spencer finds herself plucked from a boring existence in the Midwestern suburbs to star in the pilot of a teen soap opera, just like a certain Ms Holmes did with Dawson's Creek. Katie is pretty much ordered to change her name to a more glamorous Star, lose weight, et cetera. As her stardom escalates, Amy starts finding herself caught up in the maelstrom of artifice and other fun things about fame that we mere mortals are not supposed to approve of, culminating in a contracted faux relationship with a celebrity. One has to be completely oblivious to the entertainment scene not to see even a little parallel between Amy's life and a certain Ms Holmes', and I suspect that this is indeed the author's intention.
Well, good for her, I must say, for she has succeeded in moving this book off the shelves and getting publicity in tabloids and entertainment magazines. Other authors trapped in the POD ghetto will no doubt kill to have her publicity machinery. But the story of Hollywood Car Wash itself is nothing special. The heroine is so bland that she's all but completely faded wallpaper in this story and the messages the book drives home are familiar morality tales about fame and avarice. Really, I don't find this story anything particularly memorable. At least if Amy is spirited or caustic, I may have reasons to enjoy this book as some standard chick-lit tale, but with Amy being as bland as sawdust, that's not possible.
Apart from the calculated designs to raise comparisons to Katie Holmes, Hollywood Car Wash is not an interesting book by a long shot. Also, this book is not well-edited by any means as there are often all kinds of errors such as the wrong usage of "this" in place of "these" and vice versa. The best thing I can say about this book is that the cover is pretty cute. Everything else about it is unfortunately most forgettable to me.
Rating: 56
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