No Ordinary Life, a review by Di

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No Ordinary Life
Suzanne Redfearn

400 pages
Published February 2, 2016 by Grand Central Publishing

Amazon | Goodreads

No Ordinary Life is a perfect title for a book for one about the life of a child actor. There should be a quote prefacing the book by Paul Peterson, a well-known child actor advocate after being one himself.

“Fame is a dangerous drug and should be kept out of the reach of children.”

This book is so much more than that….it is about the whole family. There is a newly single mother, a moody pre-teen, an 8 year old boy with select mutism and an adorable 4 year old girl with a pronounced lisp. The four year old is the one who accidentally becomes a budding actor. And, then her brother gets into it too. This is a perfect set up for drama.

One annoying aspect of the whole book is that the author tries to illustrate the lisp of Molly, the 4 year old, by inserting the letter W into every word of dialogue that comes out of her mouth. Very distracting.

Characters: the children are all great. Each one has their distinct personalities and they are well developed and evolve throughout the book. But, I do have trouble liking and identifying with their mother. She makes a lot of decisions based on her own needs, not those of her children. While it is obvious that she loves them, her parenting skills need work. And, the sometimes absent father/husband is a piece of work. He sees his own children as commodities.

The author really brings to the forefront the hard work and tedium of show business. Then there are dangers from fans/stalkers, paparazzi, and other show business personalities who have their own perverted agendas. While it is interesting to read about, some of the incidents are very disturbing.

The rest of the book is a train wreck… I was horrified but I could not look away. I’m not sure how I feel about some of what happened. The lead up to the ending really illustrated the lengths that a mother will go to to protect her family. The jury will remain out on the fact as to whether or not it was morally acceptable.

One of the characters in the book utters this statement: Welcome to the crazy world of celebrity, where fiction becomes fact.

I believe these are true words in too many cases.

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