The Truth About My Success - Hardcover

Sheldon, Dyan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763672726 ISBN 13: 9780763672720

Publisher: Candlewick, 2015

Synopsis

What happens when a bratty teenage star and a hardworking waitress get a taste of each other’s worlds? Featuring the best-selling Dyan Sheldon at her snarky, entertaining best.

Paloma Rose is sixteen and already a major TV star. She has money, franchises, adoring fans — and an agent and parents who are dependent on her success to sustain their very comfortable lives. But all that could come to an end when Paloma becomes more famous for her bad behavior than for her acting and her show’s sponsors threaten to cancel the upcoming season if things don’t improve. Meanwhile, Paloma’s worried agent happens upon Oona Ginness working in a coffee shop. Maybe she’s not as tall or as blond as Paloma, but details aside, they really might be twins. So a plan is born: What if they send Paloma to a brat camp to become a better person and put the malleable and much nicer Oona in her place? Oona thinks it’s a stupid idea, but the money is hard to resist, given her family’s dire circumstances. What does she have to lose? Of course, plans don’t always work out the way they’re supposed to. . . .

About this title

About the Author

Dyan Sheldon is the author of many novels for young readers, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, which was made into a major motion picture, The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love, and One or Two Things I Learned About Love. Dyan Sheldon was born in Brooklyn and now lives in North London.

Reviews

Gr 9 Up—A Prince and the Pauper tale set in Hollywood. Paloma Rose is a 16-year-old starlet. Her television show, Angel in the House, has made her a household name. However, her increasingly scandalous behavior threatens to derail the path to stardom set out by her mother, Leone, and agent, Jack. In an act of desperation, Leone and Jack send Paloma off to a ranch for delinquents. In her place they hire Oona, a down-on-her-luck teenage waitress with looks remarkably similar to Paloma. While Oona learns to be Paloma and navigate the unexpectedly sad and stressful world of an actress, Paloma begins therapy and learns skills that she's never had to think about—cooking, cleaning, and controlling her temper. While the story line is very readable, this work is written in a detached, judgmental, third-person narrative, which hampers readers' ability to immerse themselves in the story. The characters are slow to develop, but the teens will eventually win over readers. The dialogue is occasionally unbelievable (a teen caught drinking and shoplifting uses "pig crap" as an expletive), though the plot is engaging and takes off quickly. VERDICT Despite its flaws, this novel will be an easy sell to teens who enjoyed Mean Girls and are looking for light drama.—Heather Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL

Edition details

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0763672726
• ISBN 13: 9780763672720
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352