If this book doesn’t make you pump a fierce fist in the air, I don’t know what will?

Having not read its precursor, “How to build a Girl”, I didn’t quite know what to expect, but this novel exceeded my expectations. A true coming-of-age, stepping into her sexual prime retelling. This story centres around the world of Johanna Morrigan (professionally know as Dolly Wilde), a music journalist in the 90’s. At the ascent of Brit-Pop, her writing takes off too when she clocks her USP as a young, female, and echoes that in her work.

A Young Adult (YA) read, but as a 30-something, I genuinely enjoyed it. I found the protagonist’s boldness refreshing. The age references did make me quiver, however. Especially in the wake of #MeToo and our nuanced understanding and questioning the actions of powerful men in entertainment like RKelly. I wonder if Caitlin Moran intended to explore more than misogyny in the music industry?

How To Be Famous is the highly anticipated sequel to How To Build A Girl, the story of a young feisty music obsessed northerner-cum-londoner Dolly Wilde (the fabulous pen name of Johanna Morrigan).

I was worried I wouldn't be able to pick up the plot as I hadn't read the first book in the series, however that anxiety was proved wrong very quickly. Having read Moran's work before I was familiar with her life story and the kind of wild stories she enjoyed telling about her teenage years.
This story followed Dolly in the summer of '95, at the height of britpop and the start of her real proper adult life. As a music obsessed journalist working in London she is thrown into the world of celebrity head first, rubbing shoulders with the same people she listens to on tape. Taking this story away from the hilarious coming of age tale, it really is a wonderful commentary on the celebrity phenomenon. In an age where celebrities are wanting to appear "just like you" Dolly has to learn just how to navigate the lies, the truth and the mess that comes along with fame and infamy.
I really enjoyed this book, Moran's way of narrating stories is always one that flows so easily and a joy to read. Of course almost all the stories are rude, if not crude, but that doesn't take away from the deep intelligence that runs through every sentence. Overall this was a genuinely fun read and I would recommend it to anyone with a soft spot for all things britpop, gigs in dive bars and crushes on rockstars.

I love C Moran, she is a laugh a minute with some real thought-provoking parts all wrapped up in! Highly recommend.

I put this aside when I started reading it, as it didn’t grab me and I thought maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind. Having read subsequent reviews that love it, I tried to give it another go, but just not my thing. Didn’t finish, I’m afraid.

I didn't read the first book. It is a feminist book about power and how it can be abused. Not my favourite book to be honest and didn't inspire me to read the first.

This wasn’t the book for me. It wasn’t what I hoped. Not what I expected. I couldn’t give it a chance. It’s not something I would read

Very funny. But Ms Moran, in between her flashes of brilliance needs to be careful not to become a one Trick pony.

I received the ARC copy of this book from Netgally in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

What a blast from the past! Joanna is a 19 year old woman trying to make a living doing what she loves, writing about music and somehow she discovers the sexism in the industry, she finds herself involved in a "sex scandal" and fights back! At she's only 19 and it's the 90's some times we have to remember people doesn't make the best decisions at that age while drunk ok?

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, its witty and gritty and sometimes a bit too much, the character development is to be desired, but we only cover about a year, still this people could've grown up more, the story line is nice an easy to follow, I think it's right for the target audience. I might have to add some trigger warnings, sex, drugs, alcohol, sexism are the things that could trigger some people.

I wish the book was a little shorter though, as the las 20% of the book felt like didn't really came to any conclusions, and I was rushing to finish it. The best part of the book is te first half, so I felt like it could've been even edited down a little more. That is just my personal taste in books like this.

SPOILER
I dint like that Joanna played the sex tape on a gig, because it felt out of character, I think she knew he strength was in words, so I thought that putting it on writing would've been more on character. Describing what happened and her inner thoughts as well as telling people she did nothing wrong by exercising her freedom to sex, but she was taped without consent and she had a bad sex night as the person she was with wasn't good at it at all.



It made me feel happy and I'm glad the mentioning of some of the bands was done early in the book so I put together a playlist

This one wasn't really for me. Maybe it's because I haven't read the first book in the series, but I struggled to connect with the characters and it didn't really have the flow that would have elevated this beyond a collection of essays linked by a loose over arching plot.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC without obligation.

This book features heroine - Dolly Wilde! Excellent throughout! Funny, charming, devastating, heartbreaking, touching, unapologetically sexy, powerful and very funny

I generally hate book reviews that end up being a review of another book.
However…
I have been a fan of Caitlin Moran’s writing for many years and really enjoyed her memoir (for want of a better word) ‘How to be a Woman’. Her writing is sharp, funny, occasionally acerbic but always warm and human. And indeed in How to be Famous, all of the great points of her writing are here in abundance but something didn’t ‘click’ for me to the extent that I nearly gave up around the 25% mark.

The thoughts of the main protagonist and narrator, Johanna, read very like the Caitlin Moran you were expecting and the novel has the feel of a (possibly) fictionalised memoir. However, Johanna’s musings become extended portions of the book and are effectively Caitlin Moran’s (brilliantly written) essays and articles but shoehorned into sections of the narrative that relate to her chosen topic. So although these are the best written, funniest and most thought-provoking sections of the book, they do little to progress the story and slow the narrative, and unfortunately do feel shoehorned in.
Perplexingly, these are the sections worth sticking with the book for because they are frequently funny and revealing. For although this is to some extent a comic novel and with that you have to expect the characters to be exaggerated and extrapolated from ‘real’ people, unfortunately the characters were almost without exception awful people and quite unbelievable.

I know I have come into this on the second book of a trilogy where many of the characters have been introduced and I am sure that most of the characters are more or less based on reality of a sort, but somehow I didn’t believe in any of them or the interactions and conversations they had. Indeed, the further the book progressed the less I wanted to hear from them. But possibly worse than that is that after a while even our heroine’s voice started to grate. This is a book that felt to me could do with a good editor.

I know I am out of step with many of the reviews here but I don’t believe this is anything to do with gender or a ‘target audience’ meaning that I don’t ‘get’ the way the characters interact or that I just don’t get the book. I am certainly exactly the right age (if not the right gender), I just don’t think this is a great book.

Having said all that, there is enough in ‘How to be Famous’ that I am tempted to go back to the previous novel in this series ‘How to Build a Girl’ to see if I develop any more affinity with the characters that make up this book but I doubt I will do that anytime soon.

If you have never read Caitlin Moran then you are genuinely missing a treat. And because there are so many good bits I can’t bring myself to give this book less than three stars, but as novels go, this isn’t a great one even if the writing is excellent and truly individual. If you are not a fan of Caitlin Moran, you could be. Maybe just don’t start with this book.

I tried to get into this book but unfortunately, it didn't grab me as the first one did. While I loved Johanna in the first book I didn't find her as likeable in this, which is a disappointment as I'm usually a huge fan of Caitlin Moran's work but unfortunately this one just isn't for me.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity.

I didn't really enjoy this book, maybe it’s because I’m over 50! I also had to read the first one, but not sure if it would have made any difference

Picked this as I used to read Caitlin's journalistic output back in the day...

A raunchy, ireverant, and (mostly) entertaining read - if you can ignore the rather crude and graphic descriptions of sex, drugs and rock and roll, you'll find some quite beautiful writing hidden amongst the pages of this novel.

There are also some great characters, and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.

I hadn't read the previous book in this series btw - you can read this as a standalone.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC.

How to be Famous is about Dolly Wild, who is 18, living in London in her own place, and is a writer for a music magazine in 1994, when BritPop is big!

Her best friend and man of her dreams, John Kite, has just made it big in music, which means he's touring all of the time. In the meantime, Dolly makes friends with Suzy, a woman who knows she is going to be famous.

Dolly has a two night stand with comedian Jerry Sharp, which turns ugly later. There are many points where this book was great, and how Dolly deals with this situation is one of these.

How to be Famous is the second book about Johanna Morrigan aka Dolly Wild, with the first being How to Build a Girl. I'm definitely going to read that!

How to be Famous was published on 28th June 2018, and is available to buy on Amazon and on Waterstones. I've found a link to where you can search for local bookshops, including independent!

You can follow Caitlin Moran on Twitter, or through her website.

If you're interested in funny journey stories, then I'd suggest The Fall and Rise of the Amir Sisters by Nadiya Hussain, which I gave 🌟🌟🌟🌟.

I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to Penguin Random House (the publishers) for this book.

Check out my GoodReads profile to see more reviews!

I didn't read How to Be a Girl so felt a bit lost in this sequel. It was quite raw and I found it hard to read. Probably more me than the book judging by other reviews.

The sequel to How to Be a Girl, this is a coming of age novel, set in the early 1990s, filled with exquisite period detail. The author plunges the reader into the life of our heroine Dolly Wilde, a teenage music journalist, an innocent but still worldly girl. It is a modern and very real.

Maybe it's my age – I am the wrong side of thirty by quite a few decades after all – but I just don't get Moran's humour or writing style at all. It all comes across as forced. She has a reputation for her feminist, feisty views, and by crikey is she going to Deliver or Else, but for me, it just falls flat. I like a little more bite.

So what exactly is this book? I can't get a handle on it. I kept thinking for heaven's sake, Caitlin, Grow the Heck Up! This is, in all honesty, a poorly written mish-mash of a thing aimed at (possibly) younger readers with an immature sense of humour.

I gave up about a third of the way in, which is more than it deserved.

However, my thanks to Netgalley for an ARC; I now know why I've avoided this author for so long.

Hilarious and full of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, this book will make you laugh and (if you're like me and had a far more innocent adolescence than our heroine Johanna) cringe a little, but ultimately it has a lot to say about young women, liberation, sexual politics and equality. While set in the Brit-pop era of the 1990s, there is a lot of resonance for contemporary young women against the backdrop of the #metoo movement. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

I was expecting 'How to be Famous' to be a vivid flashback to my teenage years in 1995. And it really is, but it's also much more than I expected. The book is raw and aggressive in the best possible way. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll wrapped up in a funny yet brutally honest book.