Party Girl – A Review

I don’t normally post on a Saturday.  However, I didn’t realize that the link-up for Cait’s Cozy Bookclub book was Thursday and wanted to get my review of this month’s pick Party Girl by Rachel Hollis up.  At first I wasn’t sure that I’d be reading the book since my library didn’t have a copy.  But I recently joined Amazon Prime and learned about the lending library perk, where you can borrow one book a month for free.  Well lucky me, they had Party Girl available!

Here’s a synopsis of the book from goodreads:

Landon Brinkley’s dreams are all coming true. She’s landed an internship with the fabulous Selah Smith, event planner for the Hollywood elite, taking her from small-town Texas to the bright lights of LA. Landon soon finds herself in a world in which spending a million dollars on an event—even a child’s birthday party—is de rigueur and the whims of celebrity clients are life-and-death matters. At first, the thrill of working on A-list parties and celebrity weddings is enough to get Landon through the seventy-five-hour workweeks and endless abuse at the hands of her mercurial boss. But when the reality of the business reveals itself, she’s forced to make a choice: do whatever it takes to get ahead, or stay true to herself.

Drawing on the author’s real-life experiences as an event planner to the stars, Party Girl takes readers on an adventure among Hollywood’s most beautiful—and most outrageous—people, revealing the ugly side of Hollywood’s prettiest parties.

Let me preface my review by saying that I knew nothing about this book before reading it.  I hadn’t even read the goodreads review.  I just knew that it was March’s book pick so I gave it a go.  Well, I was pleasantly surprised by this read!  Warning folks, this is not serious, thought-provoking literature.  This is a light and humorous chick-lit read.  After reading a lot of suspense and non-fiction books, this was a nice change of pace for me.

Despite being sweet and naïve, Landon is a very likable character.  Her Southern charm and determination to succeed had me rooting for her from the beginning.   On the opposite end, Selah, Landon’s boss, was truly a despicable character.  I was outraged by how she treated her employees.  They worked endless hours to make an event go seamlessly and she took all the credit.  And of course, there’s a guy.  In this case, a very wealthy and good-looking one.  Rounding out the cast of characters are Landon’s roommate Max and her co-worker Miko.  The three girls make a fierce trio.

This book has it all – friendship, romance and drama.  The reader gets an in-depth look at the event planning industry.  It’s amazing to see how much work goes into some of these celebrity, big-money events.  Yes, the book has a somewhat predictable ending and the mean boss, eager intern plot is very reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada.  In this case with an event planning theme.  However,  this was a fun, light read, that I surprisingly really enjoyed!  I enjoyed getting a peek into the party planning business and I could see this book being made into a movie.