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Hot New Thing
Lily needs to ace the toothpaste commercial. Last year she'd booked half a dozen gigs but this year it's been nothing but a lame non-speaking spot for salami. She's flunked the algebra test, too and if she doesn't start making some serious money, her dad's going to fire up the "less time on acting... more time on polynomials"; speech.
Lily gets acting gigs because she's "exotic."; Chinese mom, Irish-German dad. So she doesn't look like the other girls. Hair, eyes, cheekbones... Then there's the problem with the cats. Who puts cats in a toothpaste commercial? Lily is stuck in a suffocating studio cubicle with a bunch of cats, at least half of them Siamese-they're the worst-and so suddenly it's asthma attack time.
Dizzy and wheezing, Lily stumbles for the elevator, right into the burly arms of big-time director Nic Mills. The same Nic Mills who catapults unknown actors into megastars! And that's how 15-year-old Lily finds herself swept from her everyday Vancouver life to LA in Laura Langston's Hot New Thing (Orca, $9.95).
Soon Lily finds herself filling in for the injured lead in Nic Mills' latest movie, opposite dimpled, French-speaking, Emmy-winning Etienne Quinn who, as it turns out, smells as delicious as maple-sugar bacon.
Even in his loser character's dorky green sweater and Value Village jeans, Etienne radiates charm. His famous "flick of the too-blue eyes"; and a "full-on grin"; knocks the breathe right out of Lily. Getting through a scene, though, with the "French flirt"; is only one of Lily's problems.
Her aloof cousin Samantha with her "starchy blue shirt and lace-up shoes"; hasn't exactly given her a warm welcome to LA, Lily's dad and her math teacher are still on about the polynomials, and her own agent seems to be using her time supposedly chaperoning Lily to drum up new clients.
And then Lily herself gets wooed by one of the biggest Hollywood agencies. They'd love to represent her if she just tones down her unique look with breast implants, a nose job, an eye job...
It's okay to look Asian, as long as it's "non-threatening, Westernized"; Asian. Acting is all Lily has ever wanted but will she have to lose herself to do it? As she struggles with the hardest decision of her young life, Lily's strongest ally, astonishingly, is none other than Etienne Quinn.
Hot New Thing is part of the Limelights series, an on-going series of performing arts novels aimed at an 11- to-14-years-old readership. A former journalist with CBC, Laura Langston found reality too confining and went searching for truth in fiction. She now also writes adult romance and women's fiction under the name Laura Tobias,
[review by Louise Donnelly]
[BCBW 2014]
Lily gets acting gigs because she's "exotic."; Chinese mom, Irish-German dad. So she doesn't look like the other girls. Hair, eyes, cheekbones... Then there's the problem with the cats. Who puts cats in a toothpaste commercial? Lily is stuck in a suffocating studio cubicle with a bunch of cats, at least half of them Siamese-they're the worst-and so suddenly it's asthma attack time.
Dizzy and wheezing, Lily stumbles for the elevator, right into the burly arms of big-time director Nic Mills. The same Nic Mills who catapults unknown actors into megastars! And that's how 15-year-old Lily finds herself swept from her everyday Vancouver life to LA in Laura Langston's Hot New Thing (Orca, $9.95).
Soon Lily finds herself filling in for the injured lead in Nic Mills' latest movie, opposite dimpled, French-speaking, Emmy-winning Etienne Quinn who, as it turns out, smells as delicious as maple-sugar bacon.
Even in his loser character's dorky green sweater and Value Village jeans, Etienne radiates charm. His famous "flick of the too-blue eyes"; and a "full-on grin"; knocks the breathe right out of Lily. Getting through a scene, though, with the "French flirt"; is only one of Lily's problems.
Her aloof cousin Samantha with her "starchy blue shirt and lace-up shoes"; hasn't exactly given her a warm welcome to LA, Lily's dad and her math teacher are still on about the polynomials, and her own agent seems to be using her time supposedly chaperoning Lily to drum up new clients.
And then Lily herself gets wooed by one of the biggest Hollywood agencies. They'd love to represent her if she just tones down her unique look with breast implants, a nose job, an eye job...
It's okay to look Asian, as long as it's "non-threatening, Westernized"; Asian. Acting is all Lily has ever wanted but will she have to lose herself to do it? As she struggles with the hardest decision of her young life, Lily's strongest ally, astonishingly, is none other than Etienne Quinn.
Hot New Thing is part of the Limelights series, an on-going series of performing arts novels aimed at an 11- to-14-years-old readership. A former journalist with CBC, Laura Langston found reality too confining and went searching for truth in fiction. She now also writes adult romance and women's fiction under the name Laura Tobias,
[review by Louise Donnelly]
[BCBW 2014]
Submitted on January 16, 2014 in By David.
