If You Lived Here You'd Be Famous By Now by Via Bleidner

 

This is a coming of age memoir by someone who went from a sheltered religious school to a high school in wealthy Hollywood.  It was a school where classmates were famous actors or actor's children, where the performing arts program had a 7000 seat auditorium and where the normal pressures of being a teenager were added on.  The author talks about growing up in the Internet age where everything you do is online, where cheating is rampant and almost impossible for teachers to catch and where your friends are everything. 

My takeaway from this book is how lonely the author was and how glad I was my own teenage years weren't spent in that environment.  She didn't seem to have many family connections, regarding her parents as just obstacles to getting through her day.  The only person she had a connection with was her younger sister.  That left only friends to support her and as with most teenage circles, that was an ever shifting  set of alliances.  Someone who had been a good friend one day took up with someone else the next.  Friends grew apart or were made but none seemed lasting or serious.  I was left with the impression that the author floated through her life, touching almost no one and desperately looking for a place where she made a difference.  This book is recommended for readers interested in the Hollywood life and coming of age stories.