“The Hills” in hardcover

“L.A. Candy”
AUTHOR: Lauren Conrad
PUBLISHER: Harper Collins
PAGES: 336
PRICE: $17.99

Lauren Conrad wants us to think she’s a regular girl just tryin’ to get by in the big fishbowl we call Hollywood, but we aren’t fooled. She’s just extraordinarily lucky, as evidenced by the fact that she can now add “author” to her list of occupations, which reads something like this: reality TV starlet/recreational fashion designer/Louboutin shopper/ex-girlfriend of seriously douchey guys.
Lauren, who rose to fame as the star of MTV’s duo of über-rich California kid reality TV shows, “Laguna Beach” and “The Hills,” has a knack for accepting the goods offered on Hollywood’s silver platter; her “fashion” line of simple jersey basics flew off boutique racks until girls noticed it was all stuff you could get at Forever 21, and her every move (plus those of Heidi and Spencer and Audrina and now alpha-woman Kristin Cavallari ) is documented on TV and in Us Weekly . Lauren’s face (and boobs) beam from the cover of Cosmo politan, she reps mark cosmetics and teenybop magazines shill “Dress Like Lauren!” spreads. Yep, face the cold, hard facts: she’s famous. And since she’s famous, of course she gets a three-book deal from the fine folks at Harper Collins.
But can she write? DID she write “L.A. Candy,” or is there a 50-something man behind the curtain?
“L.A. Candy” tells the story of 19-year-old Jane Roberts, a pretty blonde California girl who moves to Los Angeles for an event-planning internship and lands herself a reality TV show. Jane and her best friend Scarlett soon find themselves skyrocketing to fame and living the glamorous life in the city of angels.
Sound familiar? Lauren swears the book isn’t a thinly veiled autobiography, but I’m not so sure. “L.A. Candy” is a roman à clef of the highest order, though there are no Heidis or Spencers to be found within its pages.
Like its author, there’s nothing remarkable about Lauren’s writing style, good or bad. “L.A. Candy” is typical saccharine young adult fiction: beautiful girls dating beautiful boys in a beautiful city, jam-packed with cultural references and designer dresses. Therefore, it’s perfect for her target audience of teenyboppers who enthuse over “The Hills” and want to be just like Lauren. Lauren’s namedropping California girl vernacular luckily doesn’t begin to wear on the nerves. Jane is 19, after all, and of course new fame in L.A. is a blur of Marc Jacobs dresses and trendy clubs and bars.
Jane is an unremarkable heroine who tries to be a witty and self-aware member of the Diablo Cody Club of Quips but doesn’t always succeed. The secondary characters, like the firecracker Scarlett and the assorted love interests Jane encounters don’t get enough space to develop fully, but since Lauren has two more novels about Jane and co. to pen, perhaps she’ll get a chance to flesh them out. But if it is indeed Lauren writing “L.A. Candy,” she does try to make it worthwhile, though sometimes her similes and metaphors get clunky and her dialogue stilts. (For example, scotch runs down the producer’s throat like a “river of warmth.”) But it’s not so bad — like Lauren herself, it’s harmless and cute.
Lauren Conrad will never be Hemingway or Plath , but when it comes down to it, “L.A. Candy” satisfies its audiences’ sweet tooth pretty well.