Chore Whore: Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant [Hardcover]

Heather H. Howard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 2005

Corki Brown has been cheated on, abused, and lied to, blamed, shamed, duped, run over, pissed on, spat on, and damned to hell - all in the name of working as a celebrity "chore whore". But she's finally had it. Working for multiple celebrities at a time for nearly fifteen years, she reaches a breaking point when tasks begin to border on the surreal and her ten-year-old son starts picking up on some very strange habits. So she devises a plan to get away and save her life, her family, and her sanity. Heather Howard uses her vast experience as a Hollywood personal assistant to create a heartfelt story that parodies all of your favourite stars.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Certain passages from Heather Howard's Chore Whore: Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant lead one to believe that the author was trying to write a humorous public service announcement about the horrors (not whores) of becoming a personal assistant. Corki Brown, a long-suffering single mom with a handful of famously hard-to-please bosses, navigates a crazy world of gun-toting movie stars, Atkins diets, and hard-to-find toilet seats, all for less money than she really deserves. Howard apparently had a lengthy career as an assistant herself, so that toilet seat story would very well be based in reality. With terrifying tales like this lining bookstore shelves, it's a wonder the real rich and famous can still hail cabs, let alone find people desperate enough to wait on them full time.

The title Chore Whore might suggest that Howard would consider turning a critical eye towards those willing to take humiliating, low-paying work for the privilege of being close to celebrity. Say the type of person who looks at these positions not as regular jobs, but as literary internships to a career writing Chick Lit. No such luck, of course. The sins are all the side of fictional celebrities. (Don't worry--no actual famous people's reputations were harmed in the publishing of this book.) Howard is fine as writer; she makes the pages turn. One only wonders if books from this tell-all-style, assistant-fiction genre will hold up as well as some of the films made by the celebrities they criticize. --Leah Weathersby

From Publishers Weekly

Hen lit meets The Devil Wears Prada in this rambling peek into the world of spoiled, demanding celebrities by a former personal assistant to the stars. Forty-something Corki Brown is juggling single motherhood and a job as a personal assistant/24-7 concierge/ Jane-of-all-trades to a stable of Hollywood movers and shakers, all seemingly incapable of tying their own shoelaces. Thirty different clients need unique gifts for Steven Spielberg's birthday? Done. An actress needs an intimate dinner for 10 whipped up in a matter of hours--each guest with their own personalized diet? No problem. Used condoms need to be scooped off the floor because even the maid won't do it? Corki's got it covered. Cleaning lady, gofer, psychologist, she plays dozens of roles; not one of them, unfortunately, as a mother with time enough for her 10-year-old son, Blaise. But when sweet, airheaded star Lucy Bennett shows up for lunch with a black eye (courtesy of her new cowboy husband), and gruff actor Jock Straupman finds himself being blackmailed for his dalliances with teenage girls and wants Corki to make the money drop--one Tinseltown assistant has had enough. Readers might find it hard to care, though; Corki's clients are caricatures, and the plot meanders aimlessly from pouting celebrity to unreasonable request and back again, with neither enough humor nor glitter.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: HarperEntertainment (April 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060723912
• ISBN-13: 978-0060723910
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,697,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars She's a "Chore Whore", September 21, 2005

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chore Whore: Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant (Hardcover)

Books by ex-celeb assistants are springing up like dandelions -- of course, who can blame the poor people, after having to be all-around gofers to people who can afford anything and everything? Heather Howard treads well-worn paths in "Chore Whore: Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant," but manages to add some wonderful comic flourishes to a rather loose storyline.

Corki Brown is a hardworking widow, with a teenage son. She also works as a simultaneous "chore whore"/assistant/mommy to three different celebs: a sweet-natured star, Jack-Nicholson-style lothario Jock Straupman, and bratty Lucy Bennett,. Corki's job: Do the messy, the urgent, and the bizarre, like going shopping for someone else's condoms.

Then Lucy's personal and professional lives start to unravel. Her son starts causing trouble at school, while Jock's house is robbed of his "special" DVDs featuring trysts with underage girls, and Lucy becomes infatuated with a raging cowboy actor with a penchant for foursomes. Finally Jock and Lucy go too far -- worried mom Corki won't be used, abused, and taken for granted anymore.

Celebrities need not sweat -- while dozens are name-dropped, Howard doesn't dish dirt with any names included. It's really not even clear that Jock and Lucy are based on just one person each. But it is obvious that Howard has based Corki's nightmarish experiences on her own -- picking up the underwear of a one-night stand, because the maid won't? Ew.

Howard does a fairly good job with the comic elements of "Chore Whore," upping the absurdity factor to the max. But the multiple storylines are only loosely connected, and it's sometimes hard to keep all the maids, celebs and amours straight. And the whole matter of Corki's husband being alive or dead is brought up, then dropped.

But Howard does make some deeply likable characters, and she gives them a lot more depth than most "Devil Wore Prada" characters have. While we may despise Lucy and Jock, they have good points and human weaknesses. And while Howard never gets specific about why Corki's son is rebelling, she lets us see what happens when Corki has to play "Mom" to everyone except him.

"Chore Whore" runs along the same track as other such books, but Howard does provide some humorously human foibles for her bosses-from-hell. A fun light read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very funny, snarky celebrity read, August 6, 2006

By 

Glamorama "Glamorama" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chore Whore: Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant (Paperback)

Chore Whore is just the kind of book you want when picking up a fictionalized tale about celebrities. Great gossip, snarky commentary, and some truly scandalous dish on some barely disguised A-list stars by someone in a position to know what she's talking about.

Our heroine, like the author herself, is a celebrity assistant who works for a wide variety of A-list actors and musicians. The neurotic main character Lucy (Jennifer Aniston? Angelina Jolie? Laura Dern? all of the above are people the author has worked with) and her Billy Bob Thornton-ish husband is the most delicious to read about. Other fun characters in the book include a Jack Nicholsonish character who involves our heroine in a blackmail scandal and a relatively nice celebrity who actually treats the heroine well. You will finish the book genuinely liking and empathizing with the main character, as well as learning some hilarious gossip about real-life celebrities.

I don't know if this book REALLY is, as it claims to be, "98 Percent True," but it is definitely 100 Percent enjoyable. Recommended.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chore Whore Delivers, August 3, 2005

By 

Emma Merritt - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chore Whore: Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant (Hardcover)

This was a fun read! I was at a book signing given by the author where she said that the book was 98% true and only the names were changed to protect the guilty. Knowing that this book wasn't just a purely fictionalized account of life as a celebrity personal assistant, I was up till 2 a.m. on a work night reading it! I couldn't stop laughing and sighing for poor Corki. Corki Brown's (aka Howard's) wild experiences working for Hollywood's elite and her comic delivery of the goods were as refreshing as a southern California ocean breeze. I particularly loved the description of the wedding Corki Brown had to arrange in Greece. I felt like I was there. I'm hoping they will make a movie of this book. The wedding scene in Greece where all Hell breaks loose would be brilliant on screen. I'd also love to see another book about how Heather got into the personal assitant business to begin with. I enjoyed Chore Whore much more than the Nanny Diaries.