Story for the Week
Let me be clear…I do not believe that all digital media kids are weird. Corinne believes it, and she includes herself in the weird category.
I’m sure I have mentioned before that Corinne is double majoring in musical theater and digital media. This semester, her schedule includes Introduction to Art Software, which turned out to be one of her favorite classes. The projects she works on let her embrace all of her current obsessions.
For an assignment earlier this semester, she created a sticker pack using Adobe Illustrator. We had just been to see K-Pop Demon Hunters Sing-Along in the theater (the first time), so of course, that was top of mind for her. I mean, she’s seen the movie probably eight times and dressed up as Derpy for Halloween. The obsession runs deep. She almost used Five Nights at Freddy’s but decided it would be too hard, and then the Derpy sticker took her almost an hour. 🤣
She later designed a t-shirt using Illustrator and Photoshop for an event they had to make up. She’s been missing Liverpool lately, and one of her favorite memories from her time there was when she went to a Liverpool pub and rooted for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (who proceeded to win the match). We also occasionally watch English Premier League matches at home (Do You Watch Football…or Football?). With that in mind, she designed a t-shirt for a Tottenham and Liverpool watch party at McCooley’s.
Her most recent assignment was to create a brand with a logo and place it onto three products related to the brand, also using Illustrator and Photoshop. Corinne is pretty obsessed with her Nintendo Switch, even though she only plays a handful of the games that she owns. So she created a gaming company logo and put it on a game controller, a game package, and a charging station.
When she talked with her teacher in class about her brand logo project, one of her classmates (who has never spoken to her before) asked if she wanted to hang out because apparently he likes to game as well. He also then noticed her water bottle, which is covered with stickers from Five Nights at Freddy’s and asked if she likes FNAF (as fans apparently call it). When she said she does, another girl shouted from across the room, “Did you say you like FNAF?”
Corinne relayed this to me over text and said “WHY ARE ALL DIGITAL MEDIA KIDS WEIRD (Me included but yk).” When I laughed, she concluded with “I feel like the ‘weird kids’ with niche interests, artists, make up their own OCs [original characters…yes, I had to ask] with art. I’m a weird kid that hides amongst the normal.”
Honestly, considering some of the videos she’s shown me of her theater friends in the past, I’m not too sure what she classifies as “normal.” But it did make me think about the fact that she maintains a pretty eclectic group of friends. I’ve talked about Aly and Jakub, most recently last week in Do We Need a Name for Our New Book Club?, but another one of Corinne’s best friends, Alicja, attends the same university.
Alicja and Corinne have been friends since middle school and stayed close even though they went to different high schools. They have always run in completely different circles, but they have a beautiful friendship that has never wavered. They send weird memes and videos to one another, take each other to dances when they don’t have dates, give each other honest advice, and they laugh a lot whenever they get together.
Their college life hasn’t changed that. Alicja is not a theater kid. She has always been pretty athletic, so she’s befriended a number of athletes at school. She joined a sorority, which is totally not Corinne’s thing, and was just elected president of their Alpha Phi chapter. They don’t have any classes in common, but they make time to get together for lunch and to study together whenever they have a chance.
When Corinne was designing her stickers, Alicja commented how she couldn’t believe that was Corinne’s homework. Not surprising since Alicja’s focus is biology pre-med with a minor in psychology. She is definitely not designing stickers unless it’s to make herself a biology study guide. But it makes you realize that people come together over things that bond them even if the crowd they run with is completely different.
The book reviewed below features a former child actor who never went to a normal high school. One of the things she points out when faced with actual high school students is that television portrays kids who are different migrating toward each other—“the star quarterback hung out with the class clown, the editor of the newspaper, and the homecoming queen. These real-life kids had already learned to separate. They knew where they fit. As pathetic as it sounds, I felt they had a better sense of who they were than I did.”
I’m glad Corinne knows where she fits, even if she’s a little weird, because if I have to be honest, I’m a little weird too…hiding amongst the normal. 😉
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for Far From the A-List by Stephanie Burns
326 pages
Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing | MIRA
Publication Date: December 9, 2025
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing | MIRA.
Publisher’s Description
Former child star Michaela Turner is ready for her next big role—she just doesn’t know what it is yet. As someone whose days were once filled with bright lights, never-ending rehearsals, and adoring fans from around the world, Michaela now struggles to define herself beyond the glitz and glamour of her past.
She tries hard to stay out of the tabloids, but fading into the background isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. Not when her manipulative momager, Caroline, is dead set on launching her daughter’s big comeback, no matter how many old wounds it tears open. And especially not when Michaela’s attempts at “normal” relationships fail spectacularly at every turn, from the toxic ex she can’t seem to escape to the nice guy she wishes she could see a future with.
As her mother’s demands grow more draining and her love life takes hit after hit, she learns a few hard truths about the significance of self-worth and the beauty of letting go. Now, with her ex-boyfriend-turned-best-friend Josh as her only support, Michaela is ready to rebuild herself, one misstep at a time. And maybe, if she’s lucky, after all these years of pretending, she’ll finally have the chance to discover who she really is.
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Main Characters:
- Michaela Turner – 26 years old, former child actress everyone recognizes as her TV character Daisy Breyer from Breyer’s Town, spends most of her time now being “seen” at club openings and parties with celebrity VIPs
- Josh McKenzie – Michaela’s best friend after they dated at 16, he lives in the same building as Michaela, used to be known as Joshie Mac when he was in the boy band Boyz of the Nation
- Deacon King – Michaela’s ex-boyfriend (twice), calls her Mickie, she thought he was the love of her life until they split up two years ago when she caught him cheating, engaged to a rock journalist named Shaunn, spent more than a decade and won a Grammy with his band Reign, now launching a solo album
- Caroline Turner (Martin-Richards-Guerra) – Michaela’s estranged mother, married and divorced three times, was an overbearing stage mom when Michaela was on Breyer’s Town, deserted Michaela when she was 16, only comes around when she needs money believing that Michaela owes her
- Ben English – a high school English teacher who meets Michaela in a bookstore but doesn’t know who she is
I’m sure all of us can think of a childhood celebrity who became a troubled teen and young adult. Some of them took to drinking and drugs at a young age. Some had stage parents who were more detrimental to their careers or only in it for the money. Picture one of those and you have the female lead character in Stephanie Burns’ debut novel.
Michaela’s day-to-day consists of being seen at VIP events in New York City. When she’s recognized by people who loved her as Daisy Breyer, she feels forced to smile and engage even though it’s the last thing she wants to do. While publicly she’s dating professional baseball player Burke “The Colonel” Sanders, privately they’re really only together when he’s in town and Michaela is certain he’s sleeping with other people.
This feels like it’s meant to be a second-chance story for Michaela—not a second-chance romance but rather a second-chance life. Her best friend Josh is really the only stable person in her life. He seems unaffected by his fading stardom and encourages Michaela to ignore anything in the tabloids. But she just can’t seem to shake the party girl activities that seem to make up her sense of normal.
I liked the premise of this story—child sweetheart turned wild child seeks redemption and a normal life. But Michaela is just so unlikeable. It’s not because of the constant drinking herself into oblivion and the sexual promiscuity, which is prevalent throughout. For me, it’s the constant cheating and making excuses and her obsession with Deacon. She basically talks herself into making horrible decisions over and over. She talks like she wants to avoid ending up in the tabloids, but she pretty much makes her own tabloid fodder.
Clearly, Michaela has extremely low self-esteem, so I’d like to give her a little grace. But even when she meets Ben—a nice, normal guy she seems to like—she does everything she can to sabotage any sort of relationship. And she’s a horrible friend to Josh, which I have a really hard time getting past.
That said, Michaela has a semi-decent redemption character arc that I have to at least give the the author credit for. And I do like her interactions with Josh and Ben when she’s sober and letting herself be vulnerable. If you can get past the parts where she’s making ridiculously stupid decisions, discovering the person she becomes is worth taking the journey.
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