Five Days of Famous by Alyson Noël
2016; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 70; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2016.0998
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Gender, and Advertising
ResumoReviewed by: Five Days of Famous by Alyson Noël Elizabeth Bush Noël, Alyson Five Days of Famous. Delacorte, 2016 [304p] Library ed. ISBN 978-0-553-53797-0 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-553-53796-3 $16.99 E-book ISBN 978-0-553-53798-7 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 6-9 Nick Dashaway isn’t feeling all that jolly as his Christmas birthday approaches. Dad’s worried about the family business, older sister rails about rampant consumerism, his best friend Dougall is a social drag anchor, his crush Tinsley is uninterested, and Mom’s holiday cheer is infecting nobody. The only hope to escape this tiresome middle-school life is to win a school talent contest hosted by celeb du jour Josh Frost and skyrocket on his coattails to wealth, fame, and Tinsley. He loses the contest by a hair but gets his wish anyway when a magical bus transports him to a parallel California Tinsel Town in which he is the star of his own reality TV show, with Tinsley his adoring love interest, his family at his beck and call, Dougall his reliable wingman, and money sloshing around by the bucketful. If you think Nick has scored a one-way trip to Happily Ever After, you obviously haven’t seen It’s a Wonderful Life, The Polar Express, or A Christmas Carol. With a bit more zeal than cleverness, Noël puts together a pastiche of Christmas pop-culture references that could have been more amusing had they actually riffed on their original sources. Frost and Nick’s manager Ben Ezer, for example, is cast as the moneygrubbing heavy but never gets a shot at redemption, and Nick’s rival for Tinsley’s affection, Mac Turtledove, doesn’t have much to do with a “Twelve Days of Christmas” countdown. Still, this is about watching Nick come to his senses before the clock [End Page 188] chimes in Christmas Day, and with the help of the metaphorically confused (Sugar) Plum (Fairy), who gets her angel’s wings, Nick catches the spirit—and sharing that spirit isn’t a bad way for readers to while away some winter break vacation days. Copyright © 2016 by The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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