I wish this had been advertised as being a memoir rather than a straight up biography. I was expecting to just learn about Luke Perry so when I was hit with chapters about the authors Gen X life I was surprised. It could have just been its own book, but I feel like the author added the parts about Luke Perry to get people to pick up the book.

Luke Perry was a key player in the TV series, Beverly Hills 90210. He played the character, Dylan McKay. He also starred in Riverdale and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Margaret wrote this book by speaking to people close to him and researching his life. He first got the gig by auditing for Dianne Young, the director. His character, Dylan lived in lonely hotel room alone and he was in search of finding his father. He was the first one to admit to read the part in French the rest would just read over it. The director knew he would be prefect for the role. He first began staring in plays at age four. He had a fly malfunction and the zipper kept falling down. He didn’t let this stop him and he kept chasing after his dream to become a professional actor. The book also covered his death. He died of a stroke in 2019 at the age of fifty-two. They had to do a hero send off on Riverdale.


I liked how this book covered all of the life of Luke Perry. He never wrote an official autobiography so this is the closest thing we have to his life. I thought she did a wonderful job in tying everything together and looking at different key events in his life. It was interesting to learn about how he got into acting and took on different roles. I would recommend this book to anyone is a fan of Luke Perry and they are curious to learn more about his life.

Growing up I had a crush on Luke Perry on 90210, who didn't. The book was okay, I wish it went into more detail about Luke Perry's life, I wanted to know more. The book was also part of the author's memoir; not a fan of that aspect. I found the way this book was written to be quite odd, as practically ever other chapter were these chapters that had zero to do with Luke Perry.

A novel about Luke Perry. Which was why I picked it. I was a huge fan of 90210 and of Luke Perry’s work. Wow, this was a bit disappointing and boring. Seriously, it took days to read. I didn’t realize until the end of the book but she didn’t have any personal information about him from his immediate family. Which now I feel bad reading this because they never approved this book. And since his death was recent I believe they should have some imput. The author wrote about his life and fame, but also discussed her own life. Which again now makes sense since she didn’t know him personally. I enjoyed the interviews of the individuals that worked with Luke. He was highly regarded as an actor and as a human being. He was kind and considerate to so many people. I just didn’t care for her personal information but I understand why she did it. Overall, I wish I never picked this book. I feel so bad about it. Thank to the publisher and NetGalley for my ARC.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. I am afraid I am probably not the target audience, which is something I didn’t realize when I requested it. I assumed that this would be a biography on Luke Perry, and also some insight on how television stars influence teen and young adult culture. It was instead part biography of Perry and part memoir-type story telling by the author, which was only very loosely related to Luke Perry. I am about ten years younger than the audience who likely watched 90210 in real-time. I know all the actors and the roles they played, but I couldn’t relate to the author’s feelings about the show - which were really only sparsely sprinkled in. The back and forth between the biography and memoir styles felt very choppy. Maybe someone who grew up specifically watching 90210 would appreciate this more, and I was wrong to assume there would be commentary on other similar shows based on the title. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my copy and the opportunity to read it in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC. I loved everything about this man when i was growing up . His voice, his smile, his eyebrow. I just wanted to read abut his life and hear his voice in my head again. Taken too soon but severely missed by all.

Of course I had a crush on Luke Perry’s iconic character Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills 90210. I mean, I used to be a warm-blooded preteen when I first saw the troubled brooding rich “bad boy” with the heart of gold, a white t-shirt and a pompadour, and a full forehead of furrows that gave me very unrealistic expectations for how sixteen-year-old teenagers should look and act. And that former teen girl in me was definitely not about to miss Perry’s biography.

“His sorrows are many, but it’s much cuter to be sad driving around in a Porsche than in a broken-down Chevy.”

And I’m not even ashamed that I knew almost exactly every detail of Dylan scenes from the first three seasons or so that the book mentioned — those first seasons that were so endearingly sincere and not yet soap opera of the rich and famous. (Out of his other roles, I’ve seen a couple of movies and that’s it).

“The squeaky-clean Midwestern twins, Brandon and Brenda (played by Jason Priestley, a Canadian actor cast at the eleventh hour, and Shannen Doherty, a child actress who’d gone edgy with Heathers), needed a dark counterpoint. Enter Dylan McKay, whose antecedents included Judd Nelson, Matt Dillon, and James Dean. And before them, all the tortured poets who’d tried to catch ecstasy through adventure and verse: Rimbaud, Lord Byron, Bukowski. Dylan was a pocket version of those larger-than-life types, scaled down for high school.”

Margaret Wappler is clearly a fan, and she shows Luke Perry as an unequivocally good man who’s made a positive impact on a variety of people he came in contact with; a down-to-earth guy not corrupted by fame; a professional taking his job seriously; a colleague friendly and respectful to everyone on set; a dear friend always ready to give support to those who needed it. Gone way too soon from this world, just at 52 from a stroke, he left a big empty space in the hearts of those close to him.

I think I would have genuinely loved having Luke Perry as a friend.

“There was “never a diva move” from Luke, Fontana says. “I don’t think he was capable of it.”

But it’s not just a book about Luke Perry. I should have been clued in by the second part of the title —“How a Generation Grew Up”. Well, not quite a story of a generation, really, but one person - Margaret Wappler herself, with chapters on Perry alternating with Wappler’s memoir (or at least memoir-like story), with no connection to Perry other than she watched the show when she was a teen, and little there of interest to me. And the addition of this memoir just did not hold my interest, leaving me thinking that these pages could have been instead spent on a deeper dive into Perry’s life as this book, even though respectful to Perry, often seemed much too superficial, and in the end I learned more about Wappler than about Perry — which wasn’t what I was expecting. (But maybe there was not that much material there, given that Wappler mentions that Perry’s family and his 90210 colleagues declined participation in this book — and therefore maybe it needed padding to be more than a long magazine piece).

That titular generation growing up — yeah, that was pretty much Wappler describing her life which really is a stretch to apply to more than that one specific person.

2.5 stars. More Perry biography and less Wappler memoir, please. It’s wasn’t a good mix. That was my feeling at the end.

(But I do appreciate the instant identification with the ONLY correct way to peel a banana, Luke Perry and I fully agree here:

“And for God’s sake, don’t peel a banana from the stem. When Ari and her sister Camrey Bagley Fox, who also appeared in the film (plus two of their younger siblings), prepped breakfast in one scene, Luke caught them denuding the fruit in this most upsetting manner. Do as the monkeys do, he told them, and start from the other end with a small pinch. A decade later, Bagley says, “every time I eat a banana, I think, ‘Luke Perry,’ and I can’t open one by the stem anymore.”

——————

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and to NetGalley for and ARC of this book.

This book was really strange to me. At first, I thought that I might have picked up the wrong book. The author chose to write about her life as well as Luke Perry. I didn't see why she did that. I really didn't know anything about her, and really felt that this book was marketed as a Biography about Luke Perry, but just was an opportunity for the author to tell her story.

I did enjoy the part about Luke Perry since that is why I picked up the first place. I wish she would have just stuck to the topic at hand. If she wanted to write her own biography, she should have written it separately and not tried to sell it as a book about Luke Perry.

Very disappointed in this one.

📚 BOOK REVIEW 📚

A Good Bad Boy: Luke Perry and How A Generation Grew Up
By Margaret Wappler
Publication Date: March 5, 2024

📚MY RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

📚THE SYNOPSIS:

Best known for playing loner rebel Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills 90210, Luke Perry was fifty-two years old when he died of a stroke in 2019. There have been other deaths of 90’s stars, but this one hit different. Gen X was reminded of their own inescapable mortality, and robbed of an exciting career resurgence for one of their most cherished icons—with recent roles in the hit series Riverdale and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood bringing him renewed attention and acclaim. Only upon his death, as stories poured out online about his authenticity and kindness, did it become clear how little was known about the exceedingly humble actor and how deeply he impacted popular culture.

In A Good Bad Boy, Margaret Wappler attempts to understand who Perry was and why he was unique among his Hollywood peers. To do so, she uses an inventive hybrid narrative. She speaks with dozens who knew Perry personally and professionally. They share insightful anecdotes: how he kept connected to his Ohio upbringing; nearly blew his 90210 audition; tried to shed his heartthrob image by joining the HBO prison drama Oz; and in the last year of his life, sought to set up two of his newly divorced friends. (After his death, the pair bonded in their grief and eventually married.) Amid these original interviews and exhaustive archival research, Wappler weaves poignant vignettes of memoir in which she serves as an avatar to show how Perry shaped a generation’s views on masculinity, privilege, and the ideal of “cool.”

Timed to the fifth anniversary of Perry’s death, A Good Bad Boy is a profound and entertaining examination of what it means to be an artist and an adult.

📚MY REVIEW:

This book was everything for a Gen Xer like me. 🥹 I absolutely loved the juxtaposition of the stories of Luke's career with the stories of the author's life journey throughout those same timeframes. This brought such a unique perspective to the sharing of the snippets of Luke's life and career -- the personal vulnerabilities shared by the author during her own coming-of-age felt particularly nostalgic when interspersed with his stories too.

This book was filled with memories of moments of 90s television that had slipped from my mind, but these moments were immediately recalled as I read Wappler's words. I was swiftly transported back to those nights in front of my television, fighting for control of the one TV in the house so I could watch 90210. And the book warmed my heart with its little bits and recollections about Luke's life that I'd never known.

Overall, this book left me with a nostalgic sadness for the loss of a talent and a truly good "bad boy" - gone far too soon. A must-read for anyone who crushed on Dylan McKay as he walked the halls of West Beverly High. This was a deeper glimpse into the life of a man who was immensely beloved by everyone who knew him and I'm glad I got to read it. ❤️

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this advanced reader's copy, in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this title.
I grew up with Beverly Hills 90210, Brandon VS Dylan Kelly & Dylan or Brenda & Dylan , fast forward to the 9021OMG podcast where they speak of Luke, the person behind Dylan I could not wait to read this. I really enjoyed the writing style of this book, the back and fourth. I found it to be a blast from the past and bringing back all the emotions over watching Dylan Mckay.

I enjoyed this book. We tend to iodlize Hollywood stars. It was so good to hear how he was a good man. Worth the read.

This was interesting, but it was different from what I expected. The story was written in alternation POVs and timelines. One was a memoir of sorts of the author growing up while 90210 was on TV and the other perspective was a biography about Luke Perry. A interesting concept to combine a memoir and a biography of sorts.I did enjoy the behind the scenes insight into Luke's auditions, etc, but I wanted more biography and less memoir.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

As a millennial whose sister loved watching 90210 during the times where I would of love to be watching cartoons; I was very excited to read this. I honestly thought this would be something else. But instead, I found the way this book was written to be unique in the sense that the chapters in the book were split between a biography about Luke and a memoir of the author. I also felt like since the synopsis was so centered around Luke Perry’s image and influence on a generation that it would honestly be a more in-depth look into the actor’s life. So, this was bait and switch. A little razzle dazzle from the author and publisher to boost sales that, fell short because once you get into it there’s no real substance. I'm a little disappointed

And as always Happy Reading!!!

**Thank you to Simon and Schuster for a free copy for an honest review.

his is a book about the actor Luke Perry and the impact he had on many through his acting career. It was written after his death and highlighted his career from his early days on 90210 all the way through the last movie he starred in that wasn't released before he died.
Honestly, this book was a little strange to me. I really enjoyed hearing about how he got started in acting and his days on Beverly Hills 90210, but the rest of the book was hard to follow. It bounced back and forth and focused on one person's journey of how the actor impacted her life. I felt this book could have used more editing for it to make more sense....just my opinion.

2.5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was a fan of Beverly Hills, 90210 but lost sight of Luke Perry until Riverdale. Like the author, his sudden death hit me surprisingly hard. I enjoyed reading about the behind the scenes stories and anecdotes from people. He seemed to be a really nice guy and makes his death at such an early age even more sad. I didn’t find the sections about the author to be all that interesting.

Thank you to the author, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) copy of this book and I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

This was an interesting read. As a fan of Beverly Hills 90210 and the character Luke Perry played as Dylan McKay, I loved learning more about those aspects showcased in the book.

I found the way this book was written to be unique in the sense that the chapters in the book were split between a biography about Luke and a memoir of the author. This is something that I wasn’t expecting going in.

It was really nice to gain more insight on what goes on behind the scenes as well as the audition process. Especially, specifically for what his experiences were during his time in Hollywood.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read and fans of Luke Perry should be excited to dive into.

Thank you @SimonBooks for sending me this copy for review.

I chose to read this book because I thought it was all about Luke. There was a lot about the author while interesting enough I just found it very confusing and hard to pay attention too. Definitely some good items about Luke and his life.

“Reflecting on it years later, Muha says, ‘I don’t know how he did it, but he surpassed him: Luke Perry is even better than Dylan McKay.’”

Dylan or Brandon? #IYKYK. I was Brandon all the way…it was the eyes for me. 😍

3.5 stars! This book was timed to release around the fifth anniversary of Perry’s death from a stroke in 2019 at the age of fifty two. He was a 90’s bad boy legend and, from the sound of it, one of the most humble and kind men in Hollywood.

A Good Bad Boy was written in the most unique way, with every other chapter being about the author herself. The portions about Luke are from her own memories and experiences and those of his friends and loved ones.

I never followed him much after 90210, which was a staple in my formative years. But this book really dives deep into his character, his love of friends and family, and his selfless mannerisms and I now feel like I wish I had.

Thank you @SimonBooks #SimonBooksBuddy and @MargaretWappler for the free book.

Thank you for this ARC! I had not heard about this book but was so excited to receive it. I am a child of the 90s and grew up watching 90210 with my friends. I was a huge Dylan and Brenda fan. This book was a delightful walk down memory lane. It did not offer a lot of insight or investigative journalism but did give a nice feeling of nostalgia. It was told along side the author's own experience which did not enhance the book for me. Since I lived this time, I wanted to remember my own experiences and align them with Perry's story. I think anyone that watched 90210 will enjoy this book.

I really enjoyed the parts about Luke Perry but the parts about in italics: not so much. I was disappointed that it wasn't all about Luke Perry's life. While I definitely recommend to 90210/Luke Perry fans, I would love to have seen a bit more organization: maybe by year, cast interviews, shows he was on, etc. It did skip around quite a bit. Thanks so much, Netgalley for the preview copy!