What a brilliant book.
Insightful, hilarious, and relatable (if you are now, or have ever been a teenage girl)
Caitlin Moran has a very frank and funny way of writing which makes her stories a delight to read, also I've never read 'How to build a girl' (the first book in the series) but that hasn't hindered my enjoyment of the book at all.
Dolly, the main character, is just so engaging, I want to read more!

This was hilarious and exhilarating!!

But frankly, I wouldn't expect anything less from a book written by Caitlin Moran! I read two of Caitlin's previous books How to be a Woman and How to Build a Girl and loved them. For my American friends who don't know Caitlin Moran, I would describe her as a feminist comedian, a UK version of Amy Schumer.

How to Be Famous centres around 19 year old Dolly Wilde who moved to London from North England. Dolly grew up in an unconventional family living on benefits. Her upbringing and background is similar to Caitlin Moran's own childhood. Dolly Wilde is outspoken, fun and overweight, and she often finds herself in the most bizarre and awkward situations. If you've seen Moran's TV show Raised by Wolves (which I highly recommend!), you will recognise some similarities between the main characters.

Despite this book being a book 2 featuring Dolly Wilde (How to Build a Girl being #1), How to be Famous can be definitely read as a standalone. If you are looking for a fun read and don't mind reading anecdotes featuring penises and vaginas, definitely add this one to your summer reads. I can promise you'll be laughing out loud most of the time.

Many thanks to Penguin Random House for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book! I've enjoyed Moran's novels before and she didn't let me down with this one. Laugh-out-loud funny but also touching and shocking, you follow Jo/Dolly as she grows up in London and becomes a woman we'd all want as our friend.

Textbook Moran - hilarious, filthy and oh-so relatable. Heartfelt and rowdy, this is a perfect sequel to How to Build a Girl, feminist and irreverent in so many ways. Brava, Caitlin.

Dolly Wilde is a 19 year old music journalist living the dream in London during the Brit-pop era of the nineties.
I guess I'm not Caitlin Moran's target market, being a lady of a certain age (ahem), but I was a teenager once, so I can relate to the story.
My favourite section is her love letter celebrating teenage girls, written for her rock star boyfriend. This was so accurate, and summed up those intense feelings you endure at that age. I was too young for the Beatles - my first gig was when the Monkees came to the UK. We had the seats furthest from the stage, but that didn't matter - I was 13, and screamed to the point of hysteria - I was in the presence of my idols.
Dolly yearns for her friend John Kite, who she met before he 'became famous'. The only way she can reach him is to become famous herself. If she achieves this, it's not the way she envisioned.
Overall I enjoyed the novel. Caitlin can certainly write in an entertaining way - I loved her rambling observations on life. However, the characters were sometimes pushed a little to extremes, to the point of becoming stereotypical caricatures - the shy best friend, the loud-mouthed female singer, the embarrassing mid-life-crisis father and the alcoholic cocaine addicted rock star, and the ending was a little predictable and too good to be true.
If you're not embarrassed by descriptions of sex, it's a fun read for a few hours. She did a good job of exposing the unfairness of male attitudes to sex, and how they differ from females. The descriptions of the sex scenes were well handled. Although Dolly confessed to having 'body issues', she didn't come across as insecure, and was confident and unfazed by her sexual encounters, even if they weren't always enjoyable.
It's the first Caitlin Moran novel I've read, and I would consider reading another, but maybe not straight away. I feel I've stuffed my face with crisps and junk food and need a break.
I would like to thank the publishers Penguin Random House UK, Ebury Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

Funny, moving, so entertaining, well written, full of Caitlin Moran’s humour and personality as you know and love her, a great read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

An incredible, funny and moving story. Not my usual genre but I absolutely devoured this book. Laugh out loud and cry real tears xx

Very sorry, but not my sort of book at all, perhaps, as one of the other reviewers said, it is an age thing. I just found the main character totally unbeleivable, coarse and unlikeable.
Thank you anyway for a review copy.

Thought this was Moran's autobiography or some non-fiction work from her. Turned out to be a story. Well-written. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

How to Be Famous – Caitlin Moran

This could very easily become a very gushy essay about how much I love Caitlin Moran, so you’ll have to excuse me if my inner fangirl bursts forth. I love Caitlin Moran. I love this book and the one that came before it and if you take anything away from this post, other than I love Caitlin Moran, it is that this book is incredible and you need to get it into your lives.

So, just so we’re all on the same page, How to Be Famous is a very unexpected sequel to How to Build A Girl, which I read a few years ago and still think about sometimes. When I say unexpected, I mean in the best kind of birthday surprise kind of way, I had no idea there was going to be a continuation in Dolly/Johanna’s story, so naturally, when I saw it listed as an egalley I had to have it. There was no question. And just to be the icing on top of that amazing surprise cake, this was everything I loved about How to Build a Girl and more.

A hilarious, heartfelt sequel to How to Build a Girl, the breakout novel from feminist sensation Caitlin Moran who the New York Times called, “rowdy and fearless . . . sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways.”
You can’t have your best friend be famous if you’re not famous. It doesn’t work. You’re emotional pen-friends. You can send each other letters—but you’re not doing anything together. You live in different countries.
Johanna Morrigan (AKA Dolly Wilde) has it all: at eighteen, she lives in her own flat in London and writes for the coolest music magazine in Britain. But Johanna is miserable. Her best friend and man of her dreams John Kite has just made it big in 1994’s hot new BritPop scene. Suddenly John exists on another plane of reality: that of the Famouses.
Never one to sit on the sidelines, Johanna hatches a plan: she will Saint Paul his Corinthians, she will Jimmy his Pinocchio—she will write a monthly column, by way of a manual to the famous, analyzing fame, its power, its dangers, and its amusing aspects. In stories, girls never win the girl—they are won. Well, Johanna will re-write the stories, and win John, through her writing.
But as Johanna’s own star rises, an unpleasant one-night stand she had with a stand-up comedian, Jerry Sharp, comes back to haunt in her in a series of unfortunate consequences. How can a girl deal with public sexual shaming? Especially when her new friend, the up-and-coming feminist rock icon Suzanne Banks, is Jimmy Cricketing her?
For anyone who has been a girl or known one, who has admired fame or judged it, and above all anyone who loves to laugh till their sides ache, How to Be Famous is a big-hearted, hilarious tale of fame and fortune-and all they entail.

Right, so my love affair with Caitlin Moran, which admittedly is rather one-sided, began when I read How to Build a Girl because it resonated so much with me. It is a book about a girl growing up in a working-class family in a suburb who wants to be a writer and manages to achieve that by becoming a columnist for a music magazine while in her tender teen years. It is about growing up and accepting yourself and reaching your dreams. It is also about being a woman and all that that entails. It is a phenomenal story and for me, who grew up in a working-class family in a suburb who wanted to be a writer and went on to become a journalist (though admittedly, not for a music magazine while a teenager) it ticks literally every box. Johanna/Dolly was everything I always wanted me to be, kooky, but confident with it and utterly sure of her own ability when it comes to writing. Also, there is a line in there about how “In this family, we vote labour!” and something about how you’d be disowned for voting conservative and I feel that. That is a whole mood in my family. (In fact, I posted about that very quote here.)

After reading How to Build a Girl, I started to read more of Caitlin Moran’s work and well, I admire her, not just as a writer, but also as a journalist and a woman and How to Be Famous just further proves that I am right to do so. Though, I am conflicted on the idea of groupies and rock stars… but I do see her point!

How to be Famous catches up with Johanna/Dolly (she has her real name and her pen name, so don’t be concerned that I keep referring to her like that!) a year or so after How to Build a Girl. She is now settled in London, renting her own flat in Camden, still working at the magazine, has a group of friends around her and is loving her life. Though, she is nearly 20 at this point and is now starting to see the less shiny aspects, like the fact that she is essentially living in a boys club and after a particularly horrible sexual encounter, she’s starting to realise that to most men she comes across, being a woman is no different than being an object. So, because she is Dolly Wilde, she has to do something to right this. This is a book set in the nineties but reads like it could be happening in 2019. This is a book that isn’t afraid to stand up and speak out. Caitlin Moran, and by extension, her work, is often described as being feminist and I know that the connotations of feminism can be a bit… scary for some people because all you’ve ever really heard about feminists is that they are angry and preachy and hate men. It’s a bit like being a vegan. You mention you’re vegan and suddenly you’re on trial because someone once saw something on the internet that insisted that all vegans hate meat eaters and judge everyone for their cheese consumption. I’m about to let you into a secret, as a feminist and a vegan, all those things you’ve heard? Most of them are complete fabrications. This book isn’t preachy and it isn’t in your face, but it is feminist. Wonderfully so.

At its core, though this is a story about a girl growing up and getting wise and trying to get over a horrible experience whilst also getting even, How to Be Famous is a story about validating and celebrating teenage girls and young women. Dolly/Johanna’s latest project isn’t interviewing pop stars, it’s creating a manual for them, so that they realise just how important teenage girls are to their popularity and success. I know that teenage!Leah would have loved having a book like this to show me that my undying love for Mcfly (it is a true love and it lasts forever) is no more invalid than my dad’s equally obsessive love of Paul Weller. One isn’t better or cooler or more acceptable than the other, but teenage!Leah was shamed more than once for buying concert tickets and merch and walking to Tesco ready for opening on album release day. This is a book for any girl that has been a teenager and has been shamed for loving something. Having this story when I was younger and having a character like Dolly/Johanna would have shown me a lot earlier that there is nothing wrong with being a teenage girl.

How to Be Famous is endearing, charming and clever. It is everything How to Build a Girl was and more. In fact, this just made my favourite books of the year list and it’s only February. Just to show how deadly serious I am, here is the Nick Fury Seal of Approval, we haven’t seen that in a while now have we?

I love Caitlin Moran and found this book very entertaining. I also grew up in Camden in the mid-90's so it was nice to revisit that time through someone else's eyes! Moran has an excellent turn of phrase and the character of Dollie was very likable, if only we could have all been so wise when we were teenagers!

If you read a Caitlin Moran book or one of her columns, you know what to expect. She has a very distinctive writing style and this book is that style turned up to a Spinal Tap-esque eleven. The book’s narrator is Johanna Morrigan (who definitely isn’t Caitlin Moran) a nineteen year old who has moved down to London to write for music weekly D&ME (which definitely isn’t NME or Melody Maker). Sidelined by her colleagues for her over enthusiastic style and frustrated by the overly laddy nature of britpop, Johanna moves over to The Face to write a monthly column. Not long after, a two night stand with an edgy, alternative comedian threatens to destroy everything Johanna has worked for.

Some things I really liked about this book and some things not so much. Parts of it read like a revenge fantasy and there’s bits that just seem to work out a little bit too magically for our narrator. I find reading Caitlin Moran a bit like eating a huge packet of Haribo all in one go, starts off really well then becomes a little bit too much. There’s a lot of inner monologuing and some sections feel like I’m reading one of Moran’s columns, but maybe that’s the point. She has a lot to say and found this medium was the most effective way to say it. On the positive side, there is a lot to like here. There’s some very good points made about the music industry. How “serious” male artists are assumed to feel embarrassed by and often apologise for their young female fans and are encourage to move past them as soon as humanly possible. How the quickest way to cut down and embarrass a woman is to mock her sex life or to make a joke about her age. There’s a disclaimer at the start of the book stating that all the characters and events are fictional, at which point my eyebrows almost shot through the top of my head. Im sure the scenarios and characters feel very real to anyone woman who lived in London during the nineties and having myself once shared a lift with some Loaded writers, I shudder to think about what wasn’t suitable to go in the book.

If you punch the air and shout an almighty ‘Yes!’ to yourself while reading Caitlin Moran’s column then you will love this book. The writing is sharp and the story zips along without a word wasted. It’s an extremely positive book for any young girl who’s into her music to read and if I had a teenage daughter who’d started going to gigs I’d be giving her this book as a survival manual. It might not be for everyone but it’s a valuable book all the same.

I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair review.

As the sequel to How to Build a Girl I couldnt not read this book; If Im honest I much prefer the first book, this was a mini rollercoaster compared to the giant I cant stop screaming coaster of the first book..

Never before have I cried at a sex scene until I read this. Not that it was upsetting, it was beautifully tender and romantic and just bloody beautiful! Absolutely adored every moment reading this and I can not recommend it enough.

I adore Caitlin Moran and her vim and sheer lust for life and was excited to start the second book in her series.
I love the character of Dolly Wilde and reading about her adventures, thoughts and feelings as she wades through the seedy underbelly of the music press and patriarchal society of the Brit-pop era. She manages to pack a lifetime of experiences into a day and there is never a dull moment in her life. It is a joy to read as she tries to work out her place in the world with the love and support of her friends and siblings. But....I didn't love this book as much as I expected to. I felt that Dolly was used just a smidgen too much to broadcast "very important points", and these are opinions that I have read before in various interviews or essays, so slowed the pace of the book somewhat.
That being said, it is a glorious F-You to a certain type of toxic masculinity and wonderfully empowering. The developing relationship between Dolly and John also had me leaking my emotions all over the shop.

I'm looking forward to see the series develop further and would like to thank the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

Johanna is an 18-year-old music writer in Britpop-era London, famous for her column under the nom de plume Dolly Wilde. She longs to be with her friend John, an up-and-coming indie musician, but only sees her as a pal. After a degrading one-night-stand with a famous comedian, Johanna finds herself the subject of much mirth in the male-dominated entertainment industry. As she quickly discovers, being a semi-famous woman somehow makes it ok to be publicly sex shamed. Where is her user guide for dealing with this?

If you’ve read Caitlin Moran’s amusing memoir/well of wisdom How To Be A Woman, then you’ll recognise that much of the set-up of this story is similar to her own: Johanna is from Wolverhampton, moves to London in the 90s at a young age and writes for a music magazine. I suppose you should write what you know, right? But that does make it a little unnerving at times as you wonder how much of this is based on her life. None of it is though, obviously, as this is fiction (well, I hope to high heavens none of this happened to Moran!). Johanna is put through a really awful amount of sex-shaming and somehow manages to find her own voice in a situation she is made to feel she has no control and no right to object. This is a very believable scenario, and even though the story is set in the early 90s, it feels very relevant to the misogyny of our digital age (upskirting, revenge porn, hacking and release of personal images, non-consensual filming). Despite the serious subject matter, this is a very lovely read about friendship and support.

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If it gives me pleasure then I don’t feel guilty about it. I say this because I feel that ought to refer to my love of the works of Jilly Cooper as such a thing, but I just can’t. I adored her shorter, early books in particular – Emily, Prudence, Octavia and all the rest – although I have read some of the more substantial Rutshire chronicles titles and I was very happy to be able to meet her a year or so ago. But I’m not sure that those early novels are quite as innocent as they seemed to me when I was fourteen or so – reading them again as an adult the girls who seemed so sassy and independent were just aching to be part of a couple (even if the object of their affections was a nasty piece of work). Which puts these books, emotionally at least, in the same league for me as Wuthering Heights. Could anyone write books like these, today, but do with it with their feminist credentials intact? Step forward, the fabulous Caitlin Moran……

How to Be Famous is, in my opinion, the book that fits the bill. Like those early Jilly Coopers it features a young woman – nineteen year old Johanna, writing as Dolly Wilde – who finds herself living the life she’s always dreamed of. Writing a column for The Face magazine at the peak of Britpop, meeting the famous and telling the world about them in her own way. She’s bright, just about solvent and watching her best friend in the world become hugely famous. Her family are still a bit flakey – her father trying to recapture his lost youth by taking up residence on her sofa and trying to smoke all the weed in Camden is cringily hilarious – and she has been fighting against male prejudice but things are, on the whole, good. In particular she likes to think of herself as a woman in charge of her own body and her own sex-life (although she’s nowhere near as experienced as the makes out) and she is, until she meets sleazy stand-up comedian Jerry Sharp. When she rejects him she finds that she has bigger problems than making best friend John Kite realise that love is more important than all the fame in the world.

A fun, raunchy read for fans of a feisty romance story. And a lesson for anyone too young to remember the nineties that bad men had ways of making a young woman’s life miserable long before the rise of social media.

Johanna is seeing a lot of success. She is 19 years old, writes in the music press and has her own place in London. She might not have a lot of money but she is on chatting terms with several leading lights of Britpop and is in love with John, a rising star. However her love for John is seemingly unrequited, they are stuck at 'best mates' and now he is off on tour. She queries the sexist nature of her job and suddenly is out of work, her father splits from her mother is have his own midlife crisis and suddenly her ill-advised sexual encounter with a comedian has been videoed and the sex-tape is being infamous.
I really wanted to like this book as I find Caitlin Moran a very engaging writer but it was just too much for me. Perhaps it's my age but crude sexual descriptions marred quite a likeable story about the girl from Black Country finding her way (and true love) in fashionable London. Of course this is a fictionalised version of Moran's own life and there are some really funny parts.

I couldn't finish this book, #DNF.

It was too chaotic and mixed up and I just couldn't get with the story at all.

Caitlin Moran has been of of my favourite journalists for years, I loved How To Be a Woman and I thought she was brilliant when I heard her speak a few years ago. I also enjoyed How To Build a Girl (funnily enough, exactly three years ago) also it was quite divisive - I know a lot of people didn't enjoy it, and many of the music references were lost of me. I was wondering if that would continue in How To Be Famous as Dolly is now a full time music journalist. Thankfully, it wasn't entirely lost on me (although I did have to do a bit of googling every now and then) and I enjoyed it much more than HTBAG. Sex, drugs, adolescence, parents, friends, boyfriends, there is so much going on and yet it all fits together. Once again, though, if you're not a fan of Caitlin Moran generally, then this won't be for you.