A review by mlcarl
As Seen On TV by Sarah Mlynowski
3.0
Sunny Langstein expected her life to change when she left her career and home in Florida to move in with her boyfriend, Steve, in Manhattan. Little did she know just how much it would change. When the new job she has lined up in New York falls through, Sunny begrudgingly accepts a job offered to her by her distant father's very young, very new girlfriend: a role on Party Girls, a new reality show. It seems like a great opportunity, there's free clothes and makeovers, the opportunity to party at the coolest places in NYC, and the publicity that will hopefully help her get her next job. The only downfall? Party Girls are supposed to be single girls, so she'll have to keep Steve a secret. As the show begins filming and airing, Sunny gets more and more obsessed with her new celebrity status and starts to lose track of the things and people that are truly important to her.
As someone who enjoys fluffy chick lit and bad television, I found As Seen on TV relatively enjoyable. I rather liked the premise; the main character starring on a reality show isn't something I'd read before, which made it fun. And unlike most similar novels, there wasn't a ridiculous overabundance of celebrity and designer name dropping, which I find to be more of a hindrance than help for plot, especially when those references date the novel. (Though there were several instances of Sunny using payphones because her Florida cell phone didn't work and she hadn't gotten a "New York City cell phone" yet.) At times, I found it hard to root for Sunny, especially as she becomes more fixated on her own fame. That combined with the fact that most of the supporting characters are rather underdeveloped and/or awful, I found the second half of the book harder to be invested in. My favorite aspect of the book was that after the show started airing, the beginning of each section of the book included a look into the lives of two 20-something women watching the show, told in second person. I thought it was a really clever way to show the characters and the show from an outside perspective.
As someone who enjoys fluffy chick lit and bad television, I found As Seen on TV relatively enjoyable. I rather liked the premise; the main character starring on a reality show isn't something I'd read before, which made it fun. And unlike most similar novels, there wasn't a ridiculous overabundance of celebrity and designer name dropping, which I find to be more of a hindrance than help for plot, especially when those references date the novel. (Though there were several instances of Sunny using payphones because her Florida cell phone didn't work and she hadn't gotten a "New York City cell phone" yet.) At times, I found it hard to root for Sunny, especially as she becomes more fixated on her own fame. That combined with the fact that most of the supporting characters are rather underdeveloped and/or awful, I found the second half of the book harder to be invested in. My favorite aspect of the book was that after the show started airing, the beginning of each section of the book included a look into the lives of two 20-something women watching the show, told in second person. I thought it was a really clever way to show the characters and the show from an outside perspective.