Haunting and raw. The Comeback tells the story of a young Hollywood star discovered as a young teen coming to grips with the incredibly damaging effects of sexual assault and predatory grooming. This is the story of a woman finding what is left of her after a man and society took so much.

Plot and Structure

Grace Turner was a teen in London who often felt outcast from her peers and jumps at the opportunity of a lifetime to star in a three-part movie series by acclaimed director Able Yorke. When Grace gets the role, her parents and younger sister are moved to California where they inexplicably choose to have a home in Annaheim while Grace is largely away from them in production and attending school on set.

When the book begins, Grace is 22 years-old and nearly a year prior she walked out of her life on the eve of the Golden Globes and returned home without telling anyone. Prior to leaving her life, Grace was spiraling out of control in a haze of drugs and alcohol, but has sobered up since returning home. She has a complicated relationship with her family, who seem slighted by her distance when she began her acting career. Her sister is quite a bit younger than her, and Grace seems to be realizing she hasn’t been a role model nor did she realize she was expected to be.

“What I couldn’t have predicted was how people would want more and more of me; I didn’t yet know how closely praise is linked to punishment, how I would never again determine my own value because I wasn’t so much a person as an idea, shaped not only by the people around the table with me that night but by the millions of people who would pay to watch my movies in years to come.”

The story is told in the present and solely from Grace’s perspective, but it includes some flashbacks and stories from her past. Grace returns to her glass house in Hollywood, to a husband she holds in unrealistic high regard, like a saint. Grace left him with no notice, and she returns to him with a new girlfriend living in their house.

As Grace attempts to reclaim herself, she is lost unsure of who to turn to. Her husband, whom she left without warning, has moved on. Grace’s agent and team want her to get her career back on track. Grace’s best friend was being paid to be friends with her, so Grace questions if they are truly friends. Able has moved on from her and hasn’t cast her in his latest film, despite her once being his muse. In fact, the person who seems the more there for Grace is Able’s wife Emilia. But is Emilia doing this out of the goodness of her heart, or is she trying to make amends for what she suspects Able has done?

Themes

Originally started before the #metoo movement made headlines, The Comeback is a story of the damaging effect grooming and abuse have on vulnerable people trapped in unhealthy power dynamics.

The book focuses largely on the complicated and toxic relationship Grace has with director Able, though Able himself doesn’t appear almost at all in the present (and only in a shadowed form in flashbacks). He is a figure looming over Grace through her psyche. Meanwhile his wife Emilia is very present, doing her best to help Grace get back her life and career.

Grace (and the reader) spend much of the book questioning whether Emilia knows or suspects Able’s true nature. Grace asks several times why no one ever questioned the close relationship between this successful grown man and a teenager. The countless times the relationship is seen as flawless, with many applauding Grace as Able’s muse, and even those closest to them saying they couldn’t get between their closeness.

Meanwhile the reader gets an indirectly conveyed glimpse through Grace’s psyche, where it’s clear Grace felt trapped and unable to ask for help without ruining her career and her family’s wellbeing. Making the story more complicated, Grace isn’t exactly a likable character. By nature of how she was meticulously crafted to appeal to the public, Grace never feels like a real person. She is narcissistic and thinks constantly about what everyone else thinks of her. She is self-destructive and lashes out for attention. She is incapable of communicating as herself, and only seems to communicate through “playing herself” as a role.

I honestly think this portrayal of Grace is one of the most accurate and heartbreaking parts of her story. Grace isn’t a real person, she never had a chance to be one. Every interaction Grace has had since she was a teenager has been curated. As a teen joining Hollywood, Grace thinks mostly about how she won’t have to be bullied by her classmates anymore. When Able starts abusing her emotionally and eventually physically, Grace thinks about how awful it would be to return to her high school in disgrace and face the outcast life she had before.

Stories like these remind the reader of how young Grace is. As the book goes on, Grace begins to unravel. However, in a way Grace’s unraveling shows how strong she is. Grace isn’t really a fragile character, though she is a character who is victimized in terrible ways. As Grace struggles to tell her story, even just one time to a single person, Grace gains strength and simultaneously hurtles down a path that may end in redemption, destruction, or both.

Final Thoughts

Heartbreaking and important, The Comeback isn’t an easy book to read. I found it clever, though at times infuriating. One thing I had to reflect on and realize was likely an intentional choice by the author was how surface-level many elements of Grace’s story are. At times this can make the reading experience feel shallow, because you’re waiting for the author to really show Grace and Able having a confrontation, or for Grace to just say what she actually thinks (even to the reader).

However, this is a symptom of the abuse Grace experienced. Grace has split into the person that was created, that the audience adores, and the person she really is. Most of this book is about Grace finding out who that person is and whether she can let them have a voice. In the meantime, Grace is only able to process most of the trauma she has experienced through psychological distancing, leading to these vague and ill-defined memories and interactions.

A story of abuse and about a woman who is looking to find her voice when it was taken from her for so long. Powerful and raw.

I had a rreally hard time even getting through this. I'm not sure if it was the authors writing style or just supremely unlikeable characters. Perhaps both

It was okay. Different from what I normally read. I would probably pick up another book by this author just to see if I really do like the author’s books or not.

A jarring, powerful account of fame, youth and womanhood. This was often hard to read, and frequently disturbing, but thought-provoking and vulnerable.

This book contained a lot of potentially upsetting content for a lot of readers, as it focuses on sexual abuse that began as a young child. It's really hard for me to read/enjoy books that contain this content, as it's really odd to sexualize a child. This wasn't the book for me, but the writing was well done.

3 " well written, well meaning, simplistic and in the end disappointing" stars !!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Berkley Publishing group for an e-copy. This was released August 2020. I am providing my honest review.

I am going to keep this review short.

This is the story of a young actress in Hollywood who was sexually abused and gaslit by her director/mentor over a period of time in her youth and the aftermath. Parallel to this is her sister's story of being bullied in a private school environment.

The writing is excellent and straddles the line between literary and popular fiction. The general observations of life in vapid entitled circles in LA are enticing and wry. The complex reactions to trauma in first world circles are portrayed in a vivid and detailed fashion.

The book starts out as something quite meaningful and ends on notes of shrill violin vibratos that rings false and way too simplistic and way too Hollywood. Quite disappointing and maudlin by the end. All the male characters are written in villain or hero dichotomies and this takes away from any meaningful discourse on gendered power dynamics in Hollywood. Female complicity is done reasonably well but I fail to see in a cast of over twenty characters how all can be unlikable with varying degrees of narcissism and machiavellianism. Is that really life in LA? I don't think so.

Read My Dark Vanessa instead !

This book was absolutely brilliant! The story was well written, researched, and it was able to show the pain and hard work of young actresses in the modern world/media.

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. I'll hopefully try again in the future.
Didn't capture my attention and engagement. I'll hopefully try again in the future.

This book was breathtaking! Well written, and intriguing. I enjoyed every page! Cannot recommend enough.

I really wanted to like this one. It was kind of different from what I normally read. I didn’t like the characters and couldn’t connect with them.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into his one! I loved the writing but I just could not connect with the storlyline.

The Comeback is a book that's going to get under your skin - that's for sure, wow! I loved everything about this. Grace is such a relatable character, especially in the era of the #MeToo moment and what it means for women everywhere to finally stand up, speak out, and put their foot down. Watching the character development and growth that Grace experiences in these pages is SO validating and I was completely here for it. The darkness is balanced by her character, and I really appreciated this fictional look at something that could happen all too easily in the real world.

I love any book that dips its toes into celebrity culture and Hollywood glamor, so naturally I found The Comeback to be a great page-turner. I can't wait to see what this author writes next!

The Comeback by Ella Berman is a glimpse into the life of a former child star. It is incredibly well written and incredibly sad. It was powerful and disturbing but details the manipulation that young stars experience at the hands of powerful men. A very compelling read.

The Comeback by Ella Berman is a 2020 Berkley publication.

Painful, Powerful, and Ultimately Liberating!

After years of intense grooming as a teen star, Grace Turner, now in her early twenties, is right on the cusp of her big acting breakthrough, when she abruptly walks away from Hollywood without a word.

She’s been living under the radar, staying at her parent’s home, coping with addictions, and the pain of internalizing an insidious secret eating away at her.

As the story unfolds, through Grace’s flashbacks, we see the repulsive way she was molded, manipulated, and abused by powerful men in Hollywood.

When Grace returns to Hollywood, staging her 'comeback', she contacts old acquaintances, friends, and lovers- but, ultimately, she must decide how to navigate her life, and how to take control of her own destiny.

This is a dark story, approached with a polished, understated atmosphere which slowly builds tension and emotion as the horrifying truth is unveiled.

The subject matter is handled perfectly, without unnecessary or vivid details. The emotional impact is felt more strongly as a result.

The author states in her notes, that this book was written some months before the #MeToo Movement, which makes her insights even more impressive.

I was impressed with the way the author presented this convincing cautionary tale. It’s raw, dark, and sad, but not heavy handed or strident. The story is submitted with a subtle style, so as not to overpower nor downplay Grace's conflicts, or mettle; yet it still manages to drive home the harsh realities of the abuse she endured.

While nothing about this story should come as a shock at this point, it still boggles the mind that through all of the advances in entertainment, some things never change.

Overall, this is an impressive and timely debut, spotlighting the disturbing imbalance of power in the movie industry, the sickening exploitation of young performers, and the importance of recognizing your worth, your strength, and about having the courage to take control over one’s own life.

4 stars

A story told in flashbacks, it was initially attention-grabbing, however lagged in a lot of places for me. Definitely got some Daisy Jones feel in the writing style (another book that I wished for more and some better pacing). You won't really get any good-feely revenge conclusion with this story, which... I don't know, might have made it feel more "complete" for me. There's a lot of horrible things and trauma happening in this book in both the current retelling and flashbacks (yes, I know it's fiction), so TWs aplenty here. But I rooted for Grace along the way, and I think you will too.

Very interesting read. The Comeback is a well-written novel tackling the abusive power system in Hollywood . It is the fictional account of former child actress, Grace Turner, coming to terms with the sexual and emotional abuse by her former producer, Able, who discovered her when she was 14-years-old. An interesting story. I liked it.

The Comeback tells the story of an actress who came into the spotlight as a young teenager. Grace’s journey is thought provoking and heart wrenching. She was manipulated by Able, the man who made her famous. He made promises to her and her parents, he said he’d keep her safe. Instead, working with him was an emotional roller coaster with his hot and cold treatment, eventually going too far and at 21, Grace left her husband, the pressure of Hollywood, and went back to her parents’ home. After a year, Grace was ready to try again.

I enjoyed the depth and complexity of the characters. This felt like a realistic portrayal of Hollywood and coming of age in the spotlight. It was raw and emotional, and from the very beginning the #MeToo feeling was weighty and I wondered how deeply that had affected Grace.

“I think about another type of revenge -the quieter, less explosive kind I could inflict just by living my life in spite of him.”
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I wanted to love this was so much but it fell a little short for me. I was able to really connect with the characters and it took me while to really get into this book.

A fascinating read that will go over very well with the LA based clientele that comes into my store.