Review: The View Was Exhausting

When I first heard about The View Was Exhausting I was immediately intrigued. Celebrity gossip, WOC heroine who's a famous actress, and exotic locales? Sign me up. Authors Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta have written a novel that is engaging, smart, and thought provoking that avoids veering into frothy, gossip rag territory. It was a win in my books.

Here's the book's description:

Faking a love story is a whole lot easier than being in love . . .
The world can see that international A-list actress Whitman ("Win") Tagore and jet-setting playboy Leo Milanowski are made for each other. Their kisses start Twitter trends and their fights break the internet. From red carpet appearances to Met Gala mishaps, their on-again, off-again romance has titillated the public and the press for almost a decade. But it's all a lie.
As a woman of color, Win knows the Hollywood deck is stacked against her, so she's perfected the art of controlling her public persona. Whenever she nears scandal, she calls in Leo, with his endearingly reckless attitude, for a staged date. Each public display of affection shifts the headlines back in Win's favor, and Leo uses the good press to draw attention away from his dysfunctional family.
Pretending to be in a passionate romance is one thing, but Win knows that a real relationship would lead to nothing but trouble. So instead they settle for friendship, with a side of sky-rocketing chemistry. Except this time, on the French Riviera, something is off. A shocking secret in Leo's past sets Win's personal and professional lives on a catastrophic collision course. Behind the scenes of their yacht-trips and PDA, the world's favorite couple is at each other's throats. Now they must finally confront the many truths and lies of their relationship, and Win is forced to consider what is more important: a rising career, or a risky shot at real love?

It sure sounds like it would be a novel that could be all flash and no substance. But it's not. Clements and Datta (a wife-and-wife team) shine a light on all that is toxic about celebrity culture. For better or worse, Win is being run by a publicity machine and, the way she sees it, she has no choice but to go along with it. She can't be too loud or too opinionated or too pure or too loose. Not as a woman in Hollywood and especially not as an British Asian actress. I don't know what it's like to be an actress or a woman of colour but I do know what it's like to be a woman and could imagine, at least a little, the struggles Win was facing.

I can't quite put my finger on why I couldn't bump up my rating to a 4 star. This is a solid 3.5 star read for me and I definitely recommend reading it. But something is preventing me from all out raving about it. Part of it could be that I wanted to like Win more. She's not unlikeable but she is so caught up in managing her appearance that she hasn't thought about actual relationships and how the few people in her orbit feel about having to deal with such a particular way of life. She's referred to as "cold" a couple of times and part of what makes her a great character to read is that she's not, really, cold. She's really layered and she's struggling with her image and who she really is. Life is hard and it's easier to give into what's, well, easy and that, for Win, is putting on a persona instead of dealing with anything. I guess I didn't really like that some people in her life were being used as pawns in her life and, while I came around in the end, I still wondered what was real and what was an act. 

The writing in this one is smooth and I never felt like I was reading something written by two authors. The only blip I had that kind of annoyed me was halfway-ish through when we went back in time to see what Leo was up to before The Secret happened. It made sense from a story perspective - we needed to know what actually happened - but it threw off the flow for me. Other than that, though, the story ticked along at a good pace even with all the location changes and time jumps (a couple of weeks or so) in between.

I hesitate calling The View Was Exhausting "fun" because there were so many important topics authors Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta weave into this Hollywood story that kept it from being a mindless read. It is entertaining and it's funny but it's also smart and observant. If you're intrigued, you should definitely pick it up this summer.

*An egalley of this novel was provided by the Canadian distributor, HBG Canada, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*