LA Candy was the debut novel released last year from reality TV show ‘The Hills’ star Lauren Conrad. I find ‘The Hills’ is like marmite, you either love it or you hate it, but this book (in which the main character is a shamelessly obvious double of Conrad) could appeal to both lovers and haters.

Lauren Conrad’s LA Candy

Ok, so, you can tell that Conrad isn’t an Ivy League Graduate in creative writing; her constant uses of the abbreviations ‘OMG’ and ‘WTF’ and the abundance of the conversational word ‘like’ prove that pretty early on.

However, as I read the novel I gained a sneaky suspicion that Conrad was actually being rather tongue in cheek, and each ‘OMFG’ might in fact be steeped in irony. A disillusioned Conrad recently left ‘The Hills’, as the show became more and more scripted and less about actual reality. The reality show that Jane and Scarlett (Conrad’s characters) are featured in tells us about the invasions of privacy, the deceptive dangers of crafty editing, the fake friendships and the tensions between real friendships that arise from having your personal life on air. The authors own issues with these factors come through clearly in the text.

Lauren Conrad has left the constructed drama now to pursue her writing career and develop her own clothes line, goals that will hopefully gain her respectability away from the dazzling lights of the Hollywood Hills. If you read her novel with a pinch of salt, what you really find is an intelligent insight into the wealth, fame and beauty obsessed heart of Hollywood – and suffice to say, all that glitters is not gold.