Finding Famous by Candice Jalili
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What an incredibly fun YA novel that transplants an ordinary girl into reality TV with an ultra-wealthy family. She is awkward, but wears that with a badge of pride and doesn’t let anyone change her. Will she fit in with her new family? Will her relationships change? All of these things are tackled.
Josie Lawrence is a high school senior getting ready to go to Stanford. While she has book smarts, she is a little behind in social/emotional intelligence. Her life is simple. She has 1 true friend, hangs out with her father (her mother died a few years earlier), and has a massive crush on a boy. Cue her 18th birthday when she finds out that her biological father is none other than Ali Mashad who has risen to fame as “the” reality TV family. He has set aside money for her (important with tuition costs) that she can only get if she spends 1 season on the TV show. But when news leaks of who she is, her life turns upside down.
I honestly don’t pay attention to the Kardashians, so I don’t know of all of the parallels, other than wealth, the TV show, and all of the branding that has come out of it. That is an important part of the story, but it isn’t where the emotional depth is. The Mashad family is of Persian decent and the matriarch, Mary, has faced a lot of her own challenges and is trying to do the best to provide everything for her 3 daughters. All of the cultural references and choices in the book are wonderful. Josie has to navigate different personality styles, learning along the way that how people act is not straightforward and that love can be expressed in many ways. She also learns that motherhood is hard and that sometimes decisions that we think are the right way to go can hurt someone else.
This is a great book for the YA audience.
Thank you to NetGalley and Disney Hyperion for a digital review copy in return for an honest review. This book will be released on July 30, 2024.
