Thanks to NetGalley and Scribe Media for the advanced reader copy.

The premise of THE AUTHOR felt unique and fresh, in the satirical coverage of pop culture and obsession with celebrity. The opening "letter from the agent" was a great start to the book--the POV and writing style keeps the reader just enough off-kilter to never really settle into whether this is a "real" book or not. But once the author actually starts the book, the story is too full of itself and pretentious to keep reading. An interesting idea that doesn't execute well.

Fun concept. I was charmed by the initial marketing strategy of this novel as well. However, The Author lacks substance and a unique point of view. As someone who enjoys satire on popular culture, I found this novel to be too gimmicky and pretentious..

This is a fun concept, and it's clear that the author (or should I say "The Author"?) had a lot of fun writing it. I'm happy for him!

Ultimately, though, "The Author" makes regular reference to the writer's undergraduate novel, and frankly, that's how this reads. This felt like a personal writing exercise more than a book written for public consumption. It's unapologetic about not being written for everyone, but without significant developmental editing work, it ends up feeling as if it's written for no one but the author himself. While it's billed as "pretentious," "lowbrow," "absurdist," and "deplorable"—and it certainly hits the mark on all of those things, which, to be clear, is a good thing in this case—it intermixes styles without logic or art, giving the impression of a jumble of drafts bundled together. While I think this was meant to evoke the rush and confusion of the partying lifestyle, instead, as the reader, I felt more like I was being dragged along with a horrible hangover.

While it feels like this book is coming about 10 years after its genre's heyday, I do think it had the potential to appeal to folks who like books in this space. Unfortunately, it needs a <i>lot</i> of work first.

((We all knew there would be content warnings for this book. But on top of, well, every content warning you'd expect to see in a 2025 fratire novel (and that, folks, is all I'm going to say about my guess re: who wrote this, but I have a pretty strong suspicion—and if it's him, let me just say that he's much better with a professional editor), <b>content warning for</b> <spoiler>on-page pet murder.</spoiler>))

Sadly, I could not get into this book. I read the first chapter and most of the second before I called it. Perhaps I couldn’t connect with the character/author because of such extreme lifestyle differences. While I was reading totally sober, the book is written in a way that made me feel like I was super high as I was reading. Maybe that was the point; if so, kudos.

Interesting premise, poor execution.

Pretentious, misogynistic, homophobic, racist drivel. Usually I try to find one interesting or enjoyable aspect of a book when reviewing but this time around I have nothing. Utter trash.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribe Media | Meta Lit for the ARC…..I think.

I found the style this book and the way it was written really difficult to follow, which whilst at points reflected the events occurring, made it hard to reading and made me not really enjoy it.
I would recommend this book to people which are interested in the darker side of getting into Hollywood who are able to follow storytelling that jumps around a bit and can be complicated to follow at times

I was provided a review copy of this book

I liked the concept, but unfortunately nothing about this book worked for me. The writing style came across very over the top and pompous. Just not for me.

This was an intriguing concept, but the main character was immediately so off-putting more so then I would expect for the goof. He is not likeable at all. It was a struggle to read his point of view. This wasn't for me.

The blurb was intriguing but the execution left a lot to be desired. I tried to get through it but will leave my review here and not post a more negative one on GR, etc.

I loved the premise of this book. It had so much potential.

Here are my two thoughts:

The first thought is I feel like I was punked.
My second thought is life’s too short to read a bad book.

(I’m unable to find this on Goodreads to leave a review).

What the heck did I just read? I couldn't tell if I liked this book or not. I need to sit on it for a bit.

I’m sorry but this was a bit ridiculous. I’m all here for remaining anonymous and changing details etc. but this comes off like a publicity stunt gone wrong. It comes out April 1, 2025 but still can’t find it on Goodreads to even post a review.

The book needs major editing to make it a cohesive book as it reads like a stream of consciousness and is all over the place. I’m sorry but this wasn’t for me.

I’m thankful for the eARC from the publisher.

The idea behind this book was better executed than the book itself.
I’d like to see this book go through another couple of rounds of editing. At some points it was hard to follow.
I don’t mind a pretentious writer — as this writer was — but there needs to be better writing to really make it work. The style this book was written in is popular and I do enjoy it, but it definitely needs a few more passes and rewrites to make it work.
I did think the stories were interesting and the concept of an anonymous tell-all piqued my interested, but it felt hurried, unpolished, and, at times, over the top pretentious (in a not fun way).

What... was this? The whole anonymity thing felt like a gimmick that led nowhere. Was it supposed to be funny? Satirical? I honestly couldn’t tell. The writing was chaotic, pretentious, and hard to follow, with random name-drops and bizarre metaphors that made me feel more confused than intrigued. It tried to be deep but ended up feeling like a mess. The mystery fizzled out fast, and by the end, I didn’t care who “The Author” was. Maybe some will find it clever, but for me, it was just… a lot. And not in a good way.

This was…weird. It feels like reading fiction, I’m fairly certain it IS fiction, but it’s supposed to make us feel like we’re getting the inside scoop on a mega famous movie stars bad deeds. The writing was choppy and kinda hard to follow. A+ for creativity though, I’ve never read anything else like this. Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

About 4 stars for the concept and negative stars for the execution.

I'm really, really confused.

But let's start first. I was given a copy of The Author by The Author from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

"Lowbrow content. Highbrow craft."

- The first half of this review is correct. Highbrow could be replaced by pretentious. Craft could be replaced by 'and in want of an editor.'

So I didn't manage to finish this book. I tried very hard over the first two chapters and decided that this was a bridge too far. From what I gather, this is someone who curves around Hollywood wanting to be a screenwriter or just a general writer. It is a sort of Truman Capote-type figure, although with the stylings of Bret Easton Ellis. The drug references are numerous, and the action is frenzied and hard to pin down. However, there are parties, 'lesbians' who may or may not be lesbians, a car crash that was self-induced (the victim: "Apple bottom. Too many apple pies"), etc. Chapter 2 offers offensive observations on the NY subway and, from scanning a later chapter, value judgments like, "She was on the wrong side of ugly."

Instead of weaved cultural references, we have lines such as A Michelangelo becomes a van Gogh becomes a Picasso becomes a Pollock-like progress in reverse." Too many name-dropping references without a coherent narrative safely sunk the story and made me flick through aimlessly; the words become meaningless.

This was available to read now instead of during the normal requesting process. If this were a tongue-in-cheek novel, I would have enjoyed it. I would likely have requested it anyway, but I think this is very much a down-and-out with an intelligent bent kind of novel that is unreadable.

P.S.: The YouTube channel made so little sense...

I guess my expectations were too high. The descriptions intrigued me, and I was looking forward to reading a one-of-a-kind story about how Hollywood broke (or maybe didn’t break?) a person willing to sacrifice everything for fame. I also hoped for something in the vein of Matthew Perry’s memoir — an honest yet touching story.
Unfortunately, this book was a pretentious disappointment. From the very beginning, an agent warns that you won’t like it, and you know what? You really don’t. It manages to be both dull and outrageous at the same time. There’s no moral, no reason to root for the Author, only a vague hope that they’ll fail in their desperate, messy attempts at a breakthrough.
On top of that, the storytelling is utterly boring. The writing is bland, and the book is filled with scattered anecdotes, jumping back and forth between life events without truly engaging the reader. It felt as if the author was their own biggest failure, and this book was meant to be something, it it not..

lol, the pretentious verbiage turned me off three pages in. Now I get why the author didn’t assign his name - not because of the ‘debauchery’ that, let’s be honest, no one would care about. But because of the banal writing pretending to be intellectual and ‘special’. Truly have no interested in the rest of the book!

Did not finish. Felt too much like a gimmick and wasn't captivating for me. I wasn't drawn in by the writing, and the summary didn't do anything for me. I also couldn't find it on GoodReads, the primary platform I use to share activity and reviews.

Before starting this book, please, HEED THE WARNING!

Let me start by saying the idea of this novel and the entire roll-out is intriguing, The Author would say it ‘has legs’. You want to read it because you want to know if you can figure it out. You want the puzzle and the pay off and to rabbit-hole down some famous guys Wikipedia page.

The Author unfortunately reads more like a piece of poor slam poetry, pitifully hiding racist, homophobic, and misogynistic takes under the guise of “dark art”. Normally I am not so harsh, but I did not think I would ever read so many of those slurs so plainly on page and so often in a book publishing in 2025. There’s no thesis to support any sort of take on the use of these terms either: when they said “deplorable” they meant it. It’s graphic; there’s a sex scene that includes the words “paralyzed” and “disfigure” and “whimpering bleeding animal”, women feel like they serve the author only for the physical. Which I guess could also be because this guy is high off something or everything for like 75% of the book. My only sliver of a saving grace is that this entire thing must be satire—it has to be.

Reflecting on the early chapters, The Author describes his own writing as fast, aggressive, funny, and irreverent. It makes him feel dirty which is his only reaction to “Art” that feels authentic, so maybe that’s what this is: an attempt at art by being everything they can imagine a person would gape or gawk or grimace at. There’s an extreme excess of superfluous language such as “callipygian” and “apocryphal” that feels satirical in that they’re followed by words like “tush”, it pulled me right out of reading because I was googling.

In summation, the Author feels like if you fed ChatGPT every memoir of a 80’s, 90’s, 00’s, Hollywood star and asked it to write something you could call a Classic— and it spit out a pretentious, egotistical, maniacal, and confusing 300 page clump of words. It was all incredibly disjointed. What I will give The Author and its editors the props for is the attempt at trying to do something new, even though I feel strongly that there is no author at all. I think this is an attempt to see how the public responds to AI novels and the best disguise is something people already aren’t putting a lot of stake into, that can be called “semi auto-biographical”. I put a lot of trust into the authors I read, that even when satirical or critical or dark, the content is handled well. In this case I felt extremely let down.

I really wanted to enjoy this. But the fiction-masquerading-as-truth of it all made it a hard read. I think if I had known it was going to be written like that I could have enjoyed it more, but from a lot of the content I’m not sure I ever would have gotten all the way there. Someone will enjoy reading this, they’ll applaud the unique structure and the fresh perspective and the unflinching honesty, but, regrettably, I am not that reader.