Katie's a sympathetic, if somewhat infuriating protagonist. You can see she means well, has big dreams, but she keep self sabatoging. Instead of moving on from university life Katie just keeps changing out groups of friends so she can keep pretending to be a graduate student. This while most of her older friends--including best friend from childhood, Rory--have gone on to get "proper" jobs.
One can sympathize with Katie finding being "grown up" kind of hard to manuever and you cheer for her when she finally gets a break. On the eve of her 30th birthday Katie lands an interview at music magazine The Line, her dream job. Unfortunately, she blows it by showing up at the interview still drunk from the night before (she had only meant to go out for one drink...)
After her disasterous interview Katie goes into a tailpsin, but when she's contacted by The Line about a new assignment she hopes she just might get a second chance. Except that the assignment has nothing to do with the music magazine and, instead, is for their sister gossip rag. If Katie can ace the assignment she still has a chance with The Line. Katie is asked to go undercover in rehab to get the dirt on Amber Sheppard, the It girl actress who's downward spiral is front page news. Shades of Britney Spears. I found this part of the story--dealing with celebrities, paparazzi, and privacy--particularly timely considering our TMZ-obsessed society and paps erecting tent towns outside Tiger's rehab centre.
While in rehab Katie herself has to confront these issues while making unlikely friends and discovering things about herself she has never wanted to face. Such as why she was chosen to be sent to rehab in the first place and the uncomfortable truth that perhaps she's not really doing all that much pretending.
First-time novelist McKenzie is a Montreal-based lawyer who has created an interesting set of characters and circumstances. I really enjoyed the way McKenzie created a "soundtrack" for the novel (fitting considering Katie's job) and how she skewered romantic comedies while managing to serve up some romance herself. Katie, Amber and the other characters in the novel are far from perfect and I think this is some of what is so appealing about them. They struggle and they try their best to cope and love, very much like real life.
I thought this was a great read and would highly recommend this story about friendship, truth, priorities and trying to find your way in life.
4/5
If you're interested, you can read an excerpt of the novel here.
Alla Prossima
