I could never be famous. For starters, I don’t have a talent worth being famous for, unless you count being able to touch my nose with the tip of my tongue. 😝 But really it’s because I couldn’t give up my privacy.

By the nature of their chosen professions—actor, musician, athlete, comedian—celebrities give up a certain amount of privacy when they become famous. A quick scroll through Twitter will show you who’s trending at any given moment. Early last week, it was the Framing Britney Spears documentary. This weekend, it was a David Letterman interview with Lindsay Lohan from 2013 and Chris Harrison taking a step back from The Bachelor because of backlash over comments he made. 16-year-old social media personality Charli D’Amelio, who gained the most notoriety through her TikTok videos, has talked about being body shamed and cyberbullied by grown adults. Apparently being famous means it’s open season on anyone.

The checkout lines at the grocery store are lined with magazines and tabloids that are built on truth and lies about the lives of the rich and famous. Heck (and I’m dating myself here), there used to be a TV show literally called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I can still hear Robin Leach introducing the show.

My daughter is interested in drama and music and wants to study performing arts. She wants to be an actor. She has participated in the theater program at school, she plays in the band, she joined choir this past year, and has been involved with the speech team. Performing is something she enjoys, and she’d love to make it a career.

If she chooses that, however, she also has to choose to give up some of her privacy. We were talking recently about dealing with the press and how some celebrities are better than others at protecting their privacy, making sure that their families (who did not choose fame) are protected. I can only imagine that’s a difficult balance. I hope that Corinne can be successful in her chosen field, and I also hope that she can find the balance between a public and private life.

I have always loved the movie Notting Hill. If I am flipping through channels and it’s on, I will watch it from wherever it is. There is a scene where Julia Roberts’ character Anna, a famous American actress, is scandalously photographed by the London press at the home of Hugh Grant’s character William, a travel bookstore owner. William suggests that Anna have a little perspective and tries to convince her that she shouldn’t worry since today’s newspapers will all have been thrown out tomorrow. Her response is that their perspectives are different. “You really don’t get it,” she says. “This story will be filed. Every time anyone writes anything about me, they’ll dig up these photos. Newspapers last forever.”

I remind Corinne all the time not to post anything online that she would be embarrassed to have discovered years from now. With the online world the way it is, anything can follow you. Notting Hill might have been made in 1999, only 10 years after the invention of the World Wide Web, but the sentiment of newspapers lasting forever definitely resonates today with our online presence. In this day and age, nothing ever really goes away.

Summer Heacock wrote a great book that actually reminded me a little of Notting Hill. It’s a 5-star read, in my opinion, and definitely worth it if you’re in the mood for a little rom-com.

Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Crashing the A-List by Summer Heacock

316 pages
Publisher: Harlequin-MIRA
Publication Date: July 9, 2019
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Harlequin-MIRA.

Publisher’s Description

After four months of unemployment, former book editor Clara Montgomery is officially stuck—stuck sleeping on her little brother’s ugly couch in Queens, stuck scrolling through job listings in search of a new editorial position…and just desperate enough to take on a temporary gig clearing out abandoned storage units. If nothing else, she’s determined to keep her rapidly dwindling savings account intact.

Unfortunately, she is in no way prepared for stumbling upon dead snakes or dealing with glass jars that she’s convinced are full of pickled eyeballs. And why does everything seem to smell like beets?

Then Clara comes across a unit that was once owned by an escort service and finds the brothel “résumé” of a younger Caspian Tiddleswich, an astonishingly famous British actor. She has no intention of cashing in on her discovery, but her awkward attempts to reassure Caspian that his secret is safe go awry. Now Caspian is convinced that Clara is a blackmailer, the tabloids have her pegged as Caspian’s newest girlfriend…and Clara begins to find the A-lister’s charms more irresistible than she expected.

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If you are looking for a fun romance, Summer Heacock’s Crashing the A-List is the book to pick up. Fast-paced and funny, this book reminds me a lot of Notting Hill in reverse. Instead of an American actress who meets a British bookstore owner/non-celebrity in London, you have a British actor who meets an unemployed American book editor/non-celebrity in New York.

Clara is a kind-hearted but no-nonsense woman, and I love her relationship with her best friend Cici. Their conversations are real and funny and ridiculous just like they should be between friends. Caspian is also kind-hearted but becomes “Evil Cas” as Clara describes him when he is on the verge of losing the privacy he so strictly guards.

I love Clara and Cas together, and I enjoyed the fact that their relationship wasn’t easy. It was complicated, and Clara wasn’t the doormat we see so many times in romance novels. She stood her ground with Cas even when she was wallowing in private. I did think Cas was a bit too vicious, but I am also not a celebrity with paparazzi chasing me at every turn, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

I enjoyed the way their story unfolded. This was a great read that I could totally see being made into a rom-com for screen.

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