Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I am in charge of the senior library and work with a group of Reading Ambassadors from 16-18 to ensure that our boarding school library is modernised and meets the need of both our senior students and staff. It has been great to have the chance to talk about these books with our seniors and discuss what they want and need on their shelves. I was drawn to his book because I thought it would be something different from the usual school library fare and draw the students in with a tempting storyline and lots to discuss.
This book was a really enjoyable read with strong characters and a real sense of time and place. I enjoyed the ways that it maintained a cracking pace that kept me turning its pages and ensured that I had much to discuss with them after finishing. It was not only a lively and enjoyable novel but had lots of contemporary themes for our book group to pick up and spend hours discussing too.
I think it's important to choose books that interest as well as challenge our students and I can see this book being very popular with students and staff alike; this will be an excellent purchase as it has everything that we look for in a great read - a tempting premise, fantastic characters and a plot that keeps you gripped until you close its final page.

An obsessive friendship - a toxic relationship. Written succinctly with deft characterisation this a dark and disturbing read which will take many out of their 'comfort zone': - whilst this wasn't a book for me, I suspect that many readers will devour this in a gulp.

Now this is tricky book to review, or even describe as I'm not completely sure I understood most of the concepts being explored.

In fact I'm positive a large amount of it went over my head, but at the same time I cant' help but admire the writing.

It drew me in, and I found this to be a very fast read, and although I was left with many questions, I also couldn't' help but wonder just what I had read!

Abby seems like a very obsessive woman, and I do wonder about her mental state for most of the book.

The book felt like a stream of consciousness almost, but written in a compelling way, that before you know exactly how you are half way through the book.

There are assorted themes explored, some definitely that were beyond my ability to try to explain, but despite this I did think it was a good book, and has left me thinking.

Thank you to Quercus for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

I enjoyed this, but also it was sort of a mess. It was a lot weirder and less thriller-y than the blurb suggests – if you're expecting a Single White Female-esque story, you won't get it. It has some weird plot strands (a hippyish cult institute, a trendy film director) that don't really go anywhere but were also my favourite things about the book. I wish it had focused more heavily on that and less on making the protagonist an obsessive weirdo, because that gets a bit one-note after a while. The prose was lovely though, and I'll read Acampora's next book.

I do not know if I am becoming a stuck record but, when it comes to my interest-level in certain plot devices and/or settings, fame, celebrity and the tumultuous nature of life in the spotlight, is always going to be a selling-point for me.
A big fat tick on the hell-yeah-I-need-to-read-that list.
And yet, in as many months, I have read two books on that very topic that have just not lived up to the idea that I had cooked up in my head. Hell, it is almost as though I have finally met my celebrity crush in real life and found them to be an absolute arsehole (it is alright Joshua Jackson, I still believe in you).
The fact is that, whilst The Paper Wasp initially seems to have a bit of a shine, thanks primarily to Lauren Acampora’s rather artful prose, its true reality is eventually revealed to be more than a little dull. This, of course, is due to the characterisation of the relationship between the novel’s protagonist and her small-town-girl-turned-movie-star best friend. Or ex-best friend. Or we-talked-when-we-were-eight person.
What would you call them? Because, as someone who does not talk to any of the friends I made before the age of eleven (and that is only one, the rest I made after the age of eighteen), I honestly do not have the slightest idea.
This initial hazy foundation of a relationship does little to cement the realism of their feelings for one another; they do not account for the protagonist’s feverish obsession, or how her ‘friend’ lets her get away with behaviour that is more than a little suspect. And, this could be overlooked - people are distracted, after-all, and drugs and a personality disorder could be used to explain away some of the finer points.
But then this is impounded by the fact that the object of the obsession switches. The tool that once fostered a connection with the primary subject, somehow becomes the object itself. In doing this, Lauren Acampora seems to have forgotten the singularity of obsession; the personality of the erotomanic stalker and their tendency to isolate their obsession from any competitors to their affections. The I-will-have-you-or-no-one-else-will type.
It may seem like a small point, but the reality is that The Paper Wasp immediately loses all of its sense of realism when the switch occurs; whereby turning the novel from one about the horrifying, singular nature of obsession into one that would more than easily be categorised as ‘crazy, predatory lesbians on the prowl’ once again.
And, who needs more books like that?

Abby Graven is stuck in a rut. Stranded in a small town in Michigan she lives, unhappily, with her parents as life seems destined to pass her by. To while away the hours she collects press clippings of her high school best friend, Elise, who is now a famous actress in Hollywood. As teenagers the two would act out plays, constructed by Abby and heavily influenced by their favourite director, Perren. Abby seems destined to live out a life of monotony when along comes her high school reunion. Unbelievably, Elise turns up and makes a drunken promise to Abby about catching up. Abby takes her up on her promise and leaves Michigan behind to move to LA. She quickly ingratiates herself into Elise’s life and starts work as her assistant but the more she sees behind the curtain, the more Abby begins to resent Elise’s seemingly charmed existence.

Resentment is a big theme in this book. Abby is a classic unreliable narrator. She feels she was always the more artistic of the two and starts to believe that Elise’s success is undeserved and Elise lacks the talent her job requires. A visit to Perrin’s famous studio leads Abby down a path where her dreams and her reality start to mix into one and it’s hard to tell what is real from this point. She’s certainly an interesting character, quick to tell Elise what she thinks she wants to hear while all the time her inner voice believes the opposite. Abby has a real ruthlessness about her and seems willing to drop anyone who doesn’t fit in with her plans at a moments notice. There’s an attempt at a relationship with a cameraman Abby meets at a party but her true obsession lies with Elise and Perrin.

This book is more than your average psychological thriller. It’s more dreamlike and filled with complex characters. It’s hard not to get an image of one of several famous actresses when picturing Elise and I’m sure each reader has a different one in mind. The last quarter of the book is pretty shocking and not an ending I saw coming. It certainly stayed with me for a few days afterward which I always think is one of the biggest compliments you can pay to a book. It might not be what everyone is expecting but it certainly carries a weight and is definitely worth a place on anyone’s bookshelf.

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

I did enjoy this book. I found Acampora's writing interesting, sometimes bizarre, but held my attention.
There's a lot about rivalry, friendship, obsession in this book. I wouldn't say it's exactly thrilling, but it's intriguing definitely. I found Abby, an interesting character to follow.
Overall I enjoyed my time and I'd read from Acampora again.

Thanks a lot to the publisher and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Lauren Acampora certainly makes an arresting debut in this literary psychological drama that showcases her beautiful and impressive writing skills. Abby Graven is the product of small town Michigan, where she still lives, a once promising art student whose star has fallen after she dropped out of university. She now lives a dreary and demoralising life working as a cashier in a supermarket, obsessively following, some might say stalking, her childhood best friend, now a Hollywood success story, the actress Elise. Abby is a weird loner, a misfit, escaping the drudgery of her life focusing on her favourite director, the experimental and cult figure, Auguste Perren, with his creative institute, the Rhizome. Acampora immerses us completely into the chilling, and the deeply dark waters that is the disturbing and unsettling psyche of the dangerously ambitious Abby, who in her head is convinced that is out of step with the world because she is a superior artistic talent that others are just failing to comprehend.

At a school reunion, Abby once again connects with an inebriated Elise who not only remembers her fondly as her friend but recognises her artistic abilities, whilst offhandedly inviting Abby to see her, should she be in California. This tiny kernal of opportunity is all that Abby with her dreams needs to decamp to California, with Elise inviting Abby to stay with her, an error of judgement that will come back to haunt her. Abby insinuates herself into the lonely and disillusioned Elise's life, becoming her personal assistant. Before long, the restless Abby becomes disenchanted with her role as the supportive friend, resentful, jealous and envious. She believes in the prescient abilities of her dreams, of her greatness in art, of her total commitment to Perren, that she is surrounded by shallow mediocrity, that she can realise her ambitions, a dream world slowly curdling into nightmares.

Acampora blurs realities, making it hard to distinguish what is real and what is a product of mental illness and psychosis, Abby's dreams can feel like vivid hallucinations. Her characterisation of Abby is mesmerising, a woman with an unreliable grasp of the world as she slips into her psychopathic persona. This is an offbeat and strange novel with a narrative underlaid with a growing sense of menace and unease, with its exploration of the complex toxic relationship between Abby and Elise, and the unrelenting focus on the unreliable, deluded and delusional Abby. All of this, along with the brilliant prose kept me engrossed if occasionally baffled. The fantastical dream aspects of this novel are likely to be a deal breaker for many readers, but for those who like to venture into the darkest of reads and are looking for something different, this novel just might fit the bill. Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.

A troubled young woman, Abby, is obsessed with a childhood friend, Elise, whom she lost contact with some years earlier. While Abby endures a job she pretty much hates, still living at home with parents she doesn't much care for, Elise has left their home town in Michigan and is now a rising star in Hollywood. Abby follows Elise's career compulsively in magazines and newspapers and is surprised when Elise returns to their hometown for one evening to attend their 10 year High School reunion. Abby had assumed that Elise had completely forgotten her and their close friendship from when they were girls but Elise seems genuinely delighted to see Abby again and tells her that she should visit her in California if she is ever in the area. So one day Abby takes her parents car and her mother's credit card and heads for the bright lights of Hollywood.

This is a story about female friendship and how it can become twisted by obsession and selfishness. A very good read.

Two childhood best friends, Abby and Elise having taken different paths following school drifted apart and lost contact meet up again at their 10 year school reunion. Whilst Abby still lives at home with her parents after dropping out of college and working in the local supermarket, Elise now lives in California and has become a famous Hollywood actress. Told from Abby’s point of view it follows both women as they rekindle their friendship.

Abby has been following Elises career which would be natural being that they were once best friends but it soon becomes apparent that Abby is not just a fan or friend, she is dangerously obsessed and jealous of her old friend. She takes the label super fan to whole new level.

At the reunion after a few too many drinks Elise invites Abby to come and visit her in LA, it was more of a polite throwaway comment as opposed to a genuine invite. A few weeks later Abby turns up on Elise’s doorstep and the short visit turns into a long term stay and Abby becomes Elise’s personal assistant, integrating herself into every aspect of Elise’s life.

Some of the narration is told via Abby’s dreams and visions bringing a whole other level to the story which follows the women friendships which turns into something dark and complex. The whole story is filled with jealously, obsession, ambitions, desires and mental health issues.

The book is extremely well written, filled with vivid descriptions that make the whole story come to life in your minds eye. The characters are complex, relatable at times as well as a little disturbing. Neither women are particularly likeable but that’s what makes this book so great.

A complex, character driven plot with a dark chilling plot line that comes to life on the pages. The writing style and storyline may not be to everyone’s liking, I think this book will be a bit like marmite, you will either love it or hate it!

The Paper Wasp will be published in the UK on 13 June 2019 and can be preordered now. I highly recommend it to literally everyone so you can judge for yourself.

A big thank you to the writer Lauren Acampora, publishers Grove Atlantic and Quercus, and NetGalley for my digital advance copy in exchange for an honest and independent review.

https://debbiesbookreviews.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/the-paper-wasp-by-lauren-acampora/

Oh my god. I didn't find this particularly gripping but there's just something so horribly interesting about it. When I read the summary, I thought it would be a stalking type mystery, or something like Ingrid goes West. But this was wildly different to that. It's so spiritual. Alot of suspending disbelief, but once you start reading, i feel like it makes sense, and feels reasonable in the very specific context of this book. Most of the characters were playing support to the MC, Abby, but I found that her way of narrating helped it feel not so lonely. Also her mind is very twisted, so you keep reading despite yourself. There was a lot of twisted, and explicit sexual content, and I didn't feel like it was needed. But those parts are usually brief so you can skim through it.
Am I going to read this again? Absolutely not. But I respect it and think it can stand on its own.

Abby Graven was a high school misfit, and has never quite grown out of the idea that she's weird and special and doesn't belong because she's superior. Abby's compulsion is art. Her drawings are based on her own recurring dreams – 'the satyr dream', 'the dream of the house on the hill', among others – of which she has created hundreds of elaborate illustrations. She fancies herself an acolyte of experimental filmmaker Auguste Perren, and follows his creative techniques religiously; everything, for Abby, comes back to Perren. He runs an academy in Los Angeles called the Rhizome, and Abby dreams of going there and having him turn her art into films: 'although remote, I was Perren's best student'.

Abby's obsessions – her dreams, Perren's films, the fantasy of attending the Rhizome – coalesce in her fixation with Elise Van Dijk, an up-and-coming actress from her hometown. As children, the two girls were close friends; when the teenage Elise started acting, they grew apart, and Abby alienated everyone else by becoming a diehard Perren fanatic. Since then, she's been stewing in her childhood bedroom, making her drawings, re-watching and reading Perren's works, and collecting magazine cuttings of Elise. Then she and Elise drunkenly reconnect at a school reunion. And that's how, at the beginning of The Paper Wasp, Abby comes to be on a flight to LA, the city that's home to both Elise and the Rhizome.

There are echoes of Olivia Sudjic's Sympathy in Abby's somewhat delusional approach to her relationship with Elise. Actually, she has a somewhat delusional approach to everything, though it's rarely far-fetched enough to make the reader feel estranged from the character. I was horribly nervous whenever she referred to the magnificence of her own art – and insatiably curious too, dying to know whether at some point someone else would reveal it as nonsense, like that chilling moment with John Fenton's 'daubings' in Daphne du Maurier's story 'The Alibi'. I'm not going to tell you whether that happens – but it's not like anything Abby says can be relied upon, anyway.

So much of The Paper Wasp, from minor details to the whole of the epilogue, could be seen as an extension of Abby's fantasies. Who's to say what's 'real' for a person who believes her dreams are prophetic and/or reveal 'truths' she has no real-world access to? At several points Abby's dreams seem to lead her to revelations, but it's never clear whether she's actually right or whether she simply takes innocuous signals from others as confirmation. And the esoteric techniques employed by the Rhizome, at which she supposedly excels, seem like typical LA hokum. All this uncertainty will either thrill or frustrate you: happily, I fell into the first category.

Some of the terms used here take work to untangle. A rhizome is a type of stem system common to invasive/aggressive plants, and the philosophical concept of the rhizome, developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, applies biological ideas to theory and knowledge. The example of an orchid which attracts wasps to facilitate pollination is used to represent mutualism, interaction between two different species for mutual benefit. (There is no specific reference to paper wasps – a different family of wasps to those used in the mutualism example – in the book, so the title is something of a mystery. I have to wonder whether it would have been called The Orchid and the Wasp, which would make a great deal more sense, had a novel of that name not been published last year.)

The Paper Wasp is a bit of a difficult one to sell. The blurb for the UK edition describes it as 'an electrifying debut novel of two women's friendship, a haunting obsession and twisted ambition, set against the feverish backdrop of contemporary Hollywood' – not entirely inaccurate, but makes it sound more focused, more plot-driven, and less weird than it really is. (The disconnect can be seen in the number of Goodreads reviews for the book which contain variations on 'what did I just read?'.) For me, the natural reference points are the aforementioned Sympathy, with its eccentric, elusive protagonist, and Laura van den Berg's The Third Hotel, which similarly takes a normal(ish) premise into vaguely psychedelic territory. I liked it a lot, but it's an odd mixture – both bizarre and banal.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. You want a story like this to have elements of 'You' by Caroline Kepnes or even 'Girls On Fire' by Robin Wasserman. Yet the way it's written is incredibly off-putting. The author runs on a semi-stream of consciousness, with the character going between monologues as the world around her exists. I was hoping for the book version of the movie 'Ingrid Goes West', but it lacks direction. I wanted to know more, I wanted to hear more from the characters rather than just endless spiel about feelings and philosophies. It's not very thrilling and the writing style is really not that great. I think it needs a little clean up. A good idea though.

IF you're thinking of going to a school reunion any time soon, don't read this book. Or, maybe do as it will give you a LOT to think about and you may see your friends in a new light.

Two girls from Michigan. One works and stays at home, the other seeks and finds the bright lights of hollywood. Girl A (abby) is jealous and goes in search of girl b.(Elise) Girl A wants to BE girl B......

That's the plot - it's the getting inside the girl's mind that is the most interesting. Sheesh, Abby is straight out of Single White Female. It's a bit unbelievable though as she never seems to get her comeuppance and she gets things, does things quite easily without Elise or anyone noticing. I didn't like either girl as they both seemed as tainted by fame as each other. Abby was an awful character - in a good way! - boy was she twisted. The fun of reading this was to find out just how far she was going to go....

I'm still on the Hollywood fence with this one. Great premise and interesting look at Hollywood (which is evoked very well and very seedy - not what you will see on the tourist guides any time soon!) but the 'inside the characters head' kind of approach didn't always work for me.. The dream sequences dragged it down for me but I did smile at the end.

After spotting the cover for this novel online, I did some digging and the synopsis caught my attention. I was lucky enough to receive a review copy, and dove in shortly after it arrived. I’m a sucker for novels set in and around Hollywood, and I enjoyed Acampora’s take on a friendship twisted by ambition and an unsettling obsession.

Acampora’s prose is really, really good. One notices this from the beginning, as we begin to read Abby’s story. Told as if Abby is narrating for Elise, there is automatically a slightly creepy sense of obsession.

There is much to like in The Paper Wasp. Acampora has a real gift for sparse description, and the way she has written the interactions between Abby and Elise — not to mention the former’s obsessive, sometimes stalker-esque observations of Elise’s life — are excellent, compelling and realistic. The novel has many examples of brilliant turns of phrase, and sharp social and personal observations. Take, for example, Abby’s description of a dismissive professor:

“He interrupted. ‘You intend to major in screen arts and cultures?’ I nodded, and he looked at me for a heavy beat. ‘You may consider taking time off. In fact, I insist you do. Reconsider your goals.’ He leaned back in his chair ostentatiously, flaunting his leisure, his job security, and dismissed me with a Jedi koan: ‘Let the work find you.'”

Much is made of the “friendship” at the centre of this novel — it’s mentioned a couple of times on the cover (front and back). However, I don’t think I’d characterize the relationship between Abby and Elise as a “friendship”. Indeed, from the very beginning, it becomes clear that Abby is obsessed with Elise, holding on to their childhood friendship and closeness. She collects clippings about and pictures of Elise from the gossip and entertainment magazines, storing them in a box under her bed. The two haven’t seen each other for about a decade. Abby reaching out to Elise is presumptuous, but the latter nevertheless sees it as an opportunity to exploit Abby’s interest and enduring desire to be within the star’s orbit.

The novel has a lot to say about “friendship”, rivalry, competition, and ambition. For the main, it’s very well done. However, there was one key aspect of the novel that didn’t work for me: the dream stuff. That’s vague, I know, but dreams and the significance of them plays a big part in the novel. Abby is frequently plagued by dreams into which she reads great meaning, and often they do seem to bleed into the present. I’m not the biggest fan of dream sequences in fiction, TV, or movies — so, I guess I’m not the right audience for this approach. (I know many people who do like it, though, so if that’s you: don’t let this put you off.)

As I said, there is a lot to like in the novel. However, it nevertheless left me feeling a bit cold. Partly, this is because the “friendship” touted on the cover never really seemed to be there. Sure, it’s clear that there was something there when they were kids. But what we read of the present is not friendship: it’s obsession on Abby’s part, and a generous exploitation on Elise’s. The story proceeds at a pretty gentle pace for the most part, but then towards the end events speed up and Abby makes some pretty extreme choices. In some ways, it was predictable — mainly because the nature of the genre leads readers to expect something like that to happen.

A cautious recommendation, then.
(3.5*)