Party Girl: A Novel [Paperback]

Anna David (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 27, 2008

Celebrity journalist Amelia Stone is the quintessential Hollywood party girl: she stays out late, rubs shoulders (and occasionally more) with celebrities, and ingests copious amounts of cocaine.

But after losing her job, her friends, and much of her mind, Amelia makes the drastic decision to end her drug abuse. Once sober, she's hired by a big-name magazine to write a column detailing her wild adventures and she starts seeing the man who could be her Mr. Right.

There's just one problem. Overnight, Amelia has become the new face of Hollywood nightlife, and her editors—who don't know she's come clean —want her to play the part. As the lure of her former fast-and-furious lifestyle begins to pull at her, she must decide whether to save herself or salvage her reputation as the ultimate party girl.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

David, who has written about celebrities for glossy mags, delivers the saga of Amelia Stone, who writes about celebrities for a trashy gossip magazine. Amelia's on the L.A. merry-go-round of sex, booze and drugs, and she likes the ride and the A-list company. The patter is bubbly and witty, whether Amelia is getting in trouble at work, getting tangled up in another sexual exploit, snorting lines or puking on herself. Then her parents send her to a luxe rehab clinic after she ODs and gets fired, and on her last day there she learns she's been tapped, on the basis of her wild reputation, to write a column for a major magazine. The hitch? She's now sober, something she's afraid to admit to her employer. Amelia's deliberation on this point is drawn out, though David finds a steady supply of material in Amelia's closet sobriety. Between fake vodka shots and interest from HBO to turn her column into a series (yes, really), Amelia finds her way to a happy, sober ending. There will be inevitable comparisons to Sex and the City (Amelia is certainly cast in the Carrie Bradshaw mold), but pink book jacket connoisseurs will likely prefer the original.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Fans of Candace Bushnell and Jane Green will lap up David's debut novel, based on her real-life experiences as a cocaine-snorting Hollywood socialite. Billed as this summer's beach read, Party Girl is the tale of twentysomething Amelia Stone, lowly staff writer at Absolutely Fabulous, a celebrity gossip sheet. Amelia's round-the-clock revelry (and frequent visits to the office bathroom for a fix) get her fired from her job. There are the obligatory stint at rehab (the book's best moments, by far) and the chance at a new beginning as a society columnist for a leading magazine. But can Amelia banter about the decadent lifestyle without actually indulging in it? If journalist and television commentator David has done even half the drugs of her fictional creation, it's a wonder she's alive—and coherent enough to write about it. It's hard to muster much sympathy for Amelia, who lacks the self-deprecation of Sex and the City narrator Carrie Bradshaw. This is mildly engaging stuff, most valuable, perhaps, as a cautionary tale (Paris Hilton, take note). Block, Allison --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061374008
• ISBN-13: 978-0061374005
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #881,212 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anna David is the author of the novels Party Girl (HarperCollins, 2007) and Bought (HarperCollins, 2009), and the editor of the anthology Reality Matters (HarperCollins, 2010); her memoir, Falling for Me, which covers her attempt to re-fashion her life around the recommendations Helen Gurley Brown made in 1962′s Sex and the Single Girl, will be released in October, 2011. She's appeared repeatedly on the Today Show, Hannity, Red Eye (Fox News), CNN's Showbiz Tonight, and various other programs on Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, CTV, MTV News, VH1 and E and was the sex, dating and relationship expert on G4's Attack of the Show for over three years.

A contributor to The Daily Beast, Details and Maxim, David is currently the Executive Editor of the addiction and recovery website The Fix and visits colleges across the country to talk about addiction. She's been on staff at Premiere and Parenting, a fulltime freelancer for People, a contracted reporter for Us Weekly and a sex columnist for Razor. Her celebrity cover stories, first-person essays, and reported pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The LA Times, Vanity Fair, Cosmo, Redbook, Self, Stuff, TV Guide, Movieline, Women's Health, Esquire UK, Teen Vogue, and Variety, among many other publications.

Party Girl, which has been translated into Italian and Russian, is about a reckless 20-something who's hired to write a column documenting her exploits just as she cleans up her act. The screen rights were purchased by Sony. Bought is a fictionalized version of an investigative piece David did for Details Magazine about prostitution in Hollywood. Reality Matters is an anthology of essays about reality television shows which features the work of James Frey, Toby Young, Neil Strauss, and Jerry Stahl, among others; the book has been selected as course materials for media studies and communications courses at universities across the country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you can't live without your celebrity gossip, Party Girl is the book for you, August 3, 2007

By 

K. Hinton "avid reader" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Party Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

Amelia Stone is a party girl, in every sense of the word. In fact, her story begins with her being caught in a compromising position with the cousin of the bride at a party being thrown at her mother's house. The story then goes on to describe her almost having a menage a trois with two groomsmen, before sobering up and falling asleep. Because this is what party girls do. Living her life in a haze of cocaine and alcohol, Amelia stops partying only long enough to turn in her articles at Absolutely Fabulous (an Us Weekly-type celebrity gossip mag), feed her cats, and catch some zzzzz's. Other than that, you can find her at the hottest industry parties, doing drugs in the bathroom, staying up all night, and using Ambien and alcohol to fall asleep. That is, until her hard-partying lifestyle catches up with her and Amelia finds herself in rehab.

Though she doesn't believe she has a problem with alcohol, Amelia is willing to admit she has a drinking problem. When she checks in to Pledges, her life is in shambles, she's been fired from her job, and she doesn't know what she's going to do for work. One month out of rehab later, she re-enters the world only to find that an admirer of her party girl lifestyle (the publisher of Chat, a different magazine, with a more Cosmo feel) is offering her a job to write about the crazy nights she used to have. Amelia knows she can't pass up this opportunity, but can she make a living out of writing about a life she no longer leads?

If you're the sort of person who reads Perez Hilton or Pink is the New Blog every day, and can't live without her (or his) Us Weekly, Party Girl is going to be right up your alley. This book has all the fun and entertainment of reading trashy gossip rags without the guilt, since the characters are fictional. Amelia was an intersting narrator, to say the least. At some points she was clearly so screwed up that I pitied her, but she managed to use her own downfall to build herself up bigger than she was before. The twists and turns that this book took were not all unexpected and at times the story was a bit predictable, and in that sense it's not the best book I've ever read, but it was still enjoyable from start to finish. If nothing else, it's something to kill the time while you wait for the new Us Weekly to hit the stands.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wild, witty, and fun "Party", August 13, 2010

By 

Adrienne May (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Party Girl: A Novel (Paperback)

I won't lie, I was first attracted to the covers of Anna David's Bought and Party Girl novels. And after reading the descriptions about how if you are intrigued by celebrity glamour and lifestyles then these would satisfy your reading cravings, I figured I'd give them a try. And they truly did. I loved Party Girl, not for a light and humorous book, bust just for a wild, witty, ironic ride to the dark side of a party lifestyle and back through recovery. I didn't put the book down once I began the first page of Amelia's party of a life.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely well-written and fun!!, June 5, 2007

By 

literata (LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Party Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

I loved Anna David's novel of the steps and missteps of the charming Amelia Stone. She tells a great story and you feel for her heroine as she trips along experiencing the expectations, benefits, and pitfalls of being fabulous.
I bought one for myself and my bff. It's one of those books. Set aside a whole afternoon to enjoy this!