This is a coming of age memoir by someone who went from a sheltered religious school to a high school in wealthy Hollywood. It was a school where classmates were famous actors or actor's children, where the performing arts program had a 7000 seat auditorium and where the normal pressures of being a teenager were added on. The author talks about growing up in the Internet age where everything you do is online, where cheating is rampant and almost impossible for teachers to catch and where your friends are everything.

My takeaway from this book is how lonely the author was and how glad I was my own teenage years weren't spent in that environment. She didn't seem to have many family connections, regarding her parents as just obstacles to getting through her day. The only person she had a connection with was her younger sister. That left only friends to support her and as with most teenage circles, that was an ever shifting set of alliances. Someone who had been a good friend one day took up with someone else the next. Friends grew apart or were made but none seemed lasting or serious. I was left with the impression that the author floated through her life, touching almost no one and desperately looking for a place where she made a difference. This book is recommended for readers interested in the Hollywood life and coming of age stories.

Via Bleidner’s collection of essays depict the life of growing up among the wealthy in the Hollywood Hills high school after transferring from a private Catholic school. It’s an adolescent view of the “wanna be popular/famous.” She a young author and that speaks in her writing ability, but congrats for publishing a novel at such a young age!

Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for this audiobook.

Via Bleidner is a 21-year-old graduate of Calabasas High School and born and raised in the city of Calabasas, CA. Calabasas is a bougie, rich town nestled in the San Fernando Valley, not LA but very much LA-adjacent, and where many Hollywood elite or formerly elite live. This book is a collection of essays, somewhat chronological, about her time at Calabasas High, with then-aspiring writer and disillusioned teen Via (her renaming of her given name, Olivia) documenting the absurd antics that go on at a very fancy public high school.

These antics include things like her school constructing a lavish, far-above-state-of-the-art theatre for the drama department and casting the real Chihuahua who played Bruiser on Broadway in their production of Legally Blonde, a former Nickelodeon child star enrolling in their class and everyone competing for who gets to be his plus-one at the famous Nickelodeon Halloween party, and wildly realistic re-enactments of car crashes and loudspeaker death announcements featuring their classmates every 15 minutes to warn teens against the dangers of driving drunk and distracted driving.

Bleidner peppers these essays with reflections on today’s Gen Z youth, social media, generational malaise, and the pop culture of our moment. I’m basically the same generation as her - she’s only three years younger than me - and I admit I felt very seen by her analyses of One Direction and Tumblr, how having access to the internet has completely changed the game for young people’s discovery of the world, and the landscape of new social media wreaking havoc on our attention spans and social interactions. She has a lot of very astute observations that I really appreciated reading, and I could absolutely see her following in the footsteps of Joan Didion and Jia Tolentino (two authors who she says she greatly admires, too).

On the other hand, the actual events that happened in this book were not greatly interesting to me. I live in LA and have seen firsthand how LA youth are completely obsessed with themselves and, true to the stereotype, think they’re the most important people in the world. Via and her friends fall into this trope. Yes, their school has a lot of money, but no, this doesn’t make them any more interesting than any other school in the country. Yes, their school has weird traditions like appointing an elite, funny group of kids to be their TV broadcasters for their senior year, but every school has some niche stuff like that (including mine). I truly hate to say this because these are Via’s friends and real people, but I didn’t find the “characters” to be that interesting or memorable.

I was much more here for Via’s cultural analysis and commentary, and I’d love to read more of that in the future. Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC via Netgalley!

Thank You to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for gifting me with an audio ARC of If You Lived Here You'd Be Famous by Now by Via Bleidner. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

Imagine growing up in the Hollywood Hills where your neighbors and classmates are amongst the elite of Hollywood?!! Here, in this hilarious and eye-opening collection of essays, Via Bleidner shares her coming of age among the famous and infamous. I will admit to being a tad too old to appreciate all the pop culture and social media references, but I was still nonetheless hooked. Via explores the ridiculousness and misguided privileges offered to her as well as the pitfalls of being raised in a town where wealth and stardom supersedes reality.

I absolutely believe Gen Z readers will delight and commiserate with Via as she struggles through HS trying to be both relevant and authentic. Audio narration by author was wonderful and I can not wait to see what Via Bleidner does next.

Truly a ONE OF A KIND novel. I could not get enough. I am sure that everyone, similar to myself, cannot help with be bombarded by the likes of Hollywood society at every turn of our heads. From TV to print media, it seems like the world has been going the reality show/celeb/influencer route. Via and friends at her luxurious school are faced with this same thing as they navigate trying to live their lives and pursue their dreams all while under the immense weight that their proximity to Hollywood has placed on them. Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for a copy of this book for an honest review.

First off, I have to say the author reading the book was great.

Next, I could not finish this book because it was just not for me. I thought this book would be interesting, but once I got further into the book (I stopped at 35.6%) I HAD to stop. I didn't care anymore about the life of a girl and her high school friends living in California near the Kardashian family. It was just too much.

While the book was interesting at first it wasn't for me in the end. It was well written, but the subject matter just didn't keep my attention and I'm not sure I'm quite the target audience.

An interesting memoir about life in a place that seems made up. Seriously so far removed from 'normal' life that it might as well be another planet.

First, a disclaimer: I received this audiobook in advance of publication in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own opinions. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this book.

I have no idea why I liked this book so much, but I couldn’t put it down. This is a collection of essays that reads a bit like a memoir from the author’s high school years. She attended a high school in Hollywood Hills and navigated a world full of celebrities (or wanna-bes), affluenza, and a crazy quantity of drugs. She does this AS a teenager, lost and trying a little too hard to fit in. I am typically not a fan of “rich people problems” or “pursuit of fame” themes, but this was definitely engaging and humorous. Please note though… if you are not a member of Gen Z, you might feel like you are a hundred years old while reading this. (This might be because we kind of are now. Sorry Millennials and Gen Xers. We are ancient now.)

For fans of Keeping Up With The Kardashians with a conscience.

This collection of essays is exactly as described--a behind the scenes look at the life of a kid growing up in the Hollywood Hills. I enjoyed it as a closer look at the adolescent woes of wanna be's, about to be's and just trying to be's. I think there were definitely moments of delightful insight but on the whole it was mostly just a fun trip back to younger days dusted in pop glitter. I think as a millennial there were definitely times in which I couldn't fully relate or appreciate some of the references that feel more on the nose for Gen Z. All the same, a fun and fast read/listen.

Imagine the craziness of growing up inside the bubble of L.A.

That's what Via Bleidner writes about in her book of essays, which reads a bit like a Lena Dunham memoir for the Gen Z crowd.

Via Bleidner is funny, wise, radically honest and irreverent. She's also going places as a writer.

"If You Lived Here" is an entertaining (and eye-opening) coming-of-age story set in Calabasas. As one might expect, it's chock-a-block full of pop culture references and social media influences. There's also drug use, lots of vaping and plenty of teen angst.

As a mom (raised in Nebraska, but now living on the west coast), I'm officially petrified to send my kid to high school.


Thanks for the advanced listener copy of the audiobook via the NetGalley app. It was narrated by Via herself, and she did a fantastic job.

P.S. Via, I loved all of your "Calabraska" references.