Thanks to CLASH & NetGalley for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this: it sounded great, an updated mishmash of "Never Been Kissed" and "Election." What's not to be excited about? Alas, it fell very short of my expectations.

It's 2016, and Anissa, no Rachel, no Tatum, is a former teen actress who left the biz after getting pregnant by her true love, a young (but considerably older than Anissa) actor who soon after died young due to long term heroin addiction. She missed out on the whole high school experience, and has been more or less living like a shut-in with her daughter and mom, perpetuating her mom's lie that Anissa is her own daughter's sister. But the truth comes out during a fight (very much off-camera) and this propels Anissa, now going by her daughter's name of Tatum, back to the small town from which her true love originated, to have a do-over of her formative teen years. Sounds intriguing, right?

Well, Elizabeth Ellen might have won a Pushcart, but she is no Tom Perotta.

This book just gave me the ick so bad. Anissa's motivations start out pure (kind of), but she quickly goes off the rails, and some of the stuff she does seems to happen bc the author needs it to create catalysts later. Huge emphasis is put on people's appearance, and I get it, callow youth and everything, but the adults do it too. The kids are as bad as the adults and vice versa, in a number of different ways. This is one of those literary soap operas where no one does any work - there are sports (football & cheerleading, all others need not apply - this is AMERICA goddammit) and there are parties, but there is never homework or tests. Everyone is drunk or high, but there are no repercussions, except for what happens socially. Yes, I understand it's fiction.

There is no one to root for, even though we are given many, many (perhaps too many) POVs. Anissa is utterly without a moral compass; she is basically playing the Margaret Mead role in the wilds of American adolescence and seeing what she can stir up while living the quintessential teen school year: cheerleading, popular girl best friend, drugs, booze, sex. Taylor, Anissa's best friend and eventually romantic interest, is perhaps the most relatable character, but even she despises her mother for not being deemed desirable by her father.

The lesbian "romance" is discussed in the most boring terms; it's not interesting or even titillating; I started a separate story about a same-sex teen friendship that veered towards romance a few days after giving up on this one, and the contrast was striking.

This one was very much Not For Me, and honestly, wasn't even written very well. The characters were almost interchangeable, as was the dialogue. Great premise, not great execution. YMMV

The cover of this one caught the eye of my pop culture loving heart (I could do a whole post on all the references potentially packed into the title alone), the jacket copy drew me in (“…the darkly comedic story of a 31-year-old former child star’s journey from Hollywood to…Indiana, experiencing for the first time the off-screen life of a high school sophomore”), and then the “strikes the same chord as Heathers” sealed the deal.

Dedicated to a list of teen celebs (“most especially” Brad Renfro and River Phoenix), the book opens with quotes from IRL child stars about drinking, drugs, suicide attempts, and the way the world “look[s] at them through their phones, laughing and making jokes.” Then, a kind of prologue—sneering remarks about Tatum, our protagonist, reproduced from a fictional online forum and reflecting the very behaviour that quote calls out.

The story that prompted so much gleeful disgust follows. Tatum, having stolen her teenage daughter’s ID, becomes a cheerleader, befriends the most popular girl at school, dates a football player...and does all the things that go along with those milestones.

And as we’ve all been teenagers and know what all those things are, you can imagine that reading about a 31-year-old doing them with 16-year-olds feels…wrong at best. Particularly when you get to the steamy scenes. And find them steamy. And keep reading anyway.

Given the novel’s set-up, I suspect our discomfort is exactly what the Elizabeth Ellen wants. She’s calling out our collective complicity in what happens to people like Britney when we can’t look away. But while events get even more Heathers-esque as the story progresses, something shifts around the halfway mark and by the end I felt like she was leading the reader to not just feel sympathy, but actually root for Tatum and her teenage lover to have a happy ending.

It's clear from the both the book's opening and final pages that Brad Renfro's tragic story made a particular impression on Ellen, but the Renfro proxy in American Thighs (the older-but-still-young actor who impregnates 15-year-old Tatum before OD-ing) isn't the protagonist and, in fact, exists primarily off the page. What little we learn about him absolutely paints a picture of someone dealt a crap hand in life (druggie parents etc.), which makes me think we're meant to resist the urge to villainize him outright, despite the statutory rape.

I have lots of theories about why Ellen would have chosen to focus on Tatum instead. As challenging as the book already is, I think it would have been a much harder sell to take the same over-the-top gonzo approach to a story that ends with the protagonist OD-ing (even Heathers had a happy ending. Kind of). And I suspect an entirely straightforward telling of a tragedy like that is something Ellen would be about as interested in writing as I would be in reading.

At the end of the day, the only thing I’m sure about with this one is that I wish I had someone to discuss it with. Like maybe the author. And I will absolutely be reading more by her.

Thanks to NetGalley and CLASH Books for the advanced reader copy.

This week’s headline? Fly away to Malibu

Why this book? I wanted to read more crazy shit that I did last year

Which book format? ARC

Primary reading environment? Train

Any preconceived notions? No

Identify most with? Loving Britney Spears

Three little words? “this new creature”

Goes well with? Cigarettes, alcohol, and teenage angst

Recommend this to? People who only read dialogue 😉

Other cultural accompaniments: https://www.hobartpulp.com/

I leave you with this: “It’s all in the details that don’t show up on film.”
…
I was intrigued by the premise - an ex-child actress got pregnant at 15 and missed out on her teenage years so she runs away at 30 (after her daughter finds out she’s not actually her sister) to the town her baby daddy (another actor who OD’d while she was pregnant) is from and pretends to be a high school student. It ends up becoming a disaster, as one would expect, but we get a on-the-run sort of road trip and media frenzy out of it. Basically, everyone’s fucked up and can’t deal.

American Thighs is the second book I’ve read this year that has an interview style, this one in particular is completely written in this way. I wonder if there’ll be a surge in this kind of storytelling this year. For those that only read dialogue and love a salacious story, this one’s for you. The characters are complicated but not so complex, although it’s still entertaining. I thought it was a little bit ridiculous to interview actual famous people. I was dying when Frances Bean Cobain showed up. The thought of her and Paris Jackson going to Hawaii together is bonkers (are they even friends in real life?), but this book is full of crazy scenarios so I guess it fits.

A chaotic read but I really enjoyed it! The oral history style works well with the subject matter and although I understand other reviewers thought that the book outstayed its welcome, I felt that the frequent changes of voice helped the book seem really fast paced and propulsive. I read it a lot quicker than some books of half its length. It is very teen movie coded with some ridiculous plot twists and some pretty tawdry sex scenes but at least it was never dull!

No cause this book is right up my alley!! Some one said it was a nostalgic book with abutting voices and I can see it. If you’re easily offended I’d steer clear.

Anissa/Tatum leaves her mother and daughter behind and poses as a teen to enroll in high school. American Thighs' structure is unique--it's written in the style of an oral history. Unfortunately, that's one of the few good things about this novel. It's predictable, overlong, and occasionally troubling. I don't need the themes and/or messages spoon-fed to me, but so much is left to the reader to connect.

This is a wild read, left me breathless just with the effort of trying to get through it. So many characters, so much happens, and towards the end the premise of the story gets wilder and wilder. The story just about carries it through but it could have been a considerable amount shorter and still told the story. A lot of effort to explore many different nuances of character and action, and yet no real resolutions along the way.

DNF @ 80%

The synopsis of the book really caught my interest but unfortunately I just couldn’t continue on. This book was SO LONG when it didn’t have to be. I almost DNF’ed at 40% because I just didn’t care so much for the characters (the fact that it’s told from about 7 different character POVs can get quite confusing as well) but I pushed on because I wanted to know what would happen to “Tatum”, our main character who is 30 years old pretending to be a teenager, when she eventually gets caught. I didn’t make it to that part. I liked reading about the relationship between Taylor and Tatum and the LGBTQ representation but the story just got too repetitive. I’m sure there are people out there who will really enjoy this but it just didn’t hold my attention.

Thank you to netgalley and CLASH Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review ✨

I'm afraid I found this a deeply odd book and just could not figure out what it was trying to say. Sometimes I wish books came with an essay by the author explaining why they wrote the book and what they were attempting to achieve with it. This is one of those times! If this had been written by a man I would be disgusted - a lot of it reads like a series of lurid sexual fantasies about teenagers. I confess that as the author is a woman I find myself looking for a "why" to this story or some kind of "message," though perhaps there is nothing there. I cannot submit the review without a rating so I have to give this one star, although I would still like to understand the book more and know my interpretation may be faulty.

Tatum Grant was a child star. She spent her formative years in Hollywood, essentially being bounced from set to set to please the adults in her life. She totally missed out on having any sort of normalcy in her childhood. And then she became a teen age mother having been impregnated by a much older very famous actor. Soooooo at age 31, she leaves her mother and her starlet daughter in Hollywood to start her life over.

Tatum travels to small town Elkheart ( yes there’s an e in heart) Indiana, where using the ID of her 16 year old daughter, she summons up her best acting skills to take on the real life role of a high school student. She makes friends with the most popular girl in class, has sex with boys and grown men and indeed lives the life she has missed. Elizabeth Ellen is an award winning author and her plot sounds intriguing. BUT in reality, for me, it just didn’t work.

Told from a plethora of POVs I felt the story lacked continuity, became confusing and complicated causing me to lose interest. It turned out to be too much work keeping characters and events straight. Also it was just too long given the unending series of narrators. Some of the sex scenes were very descriptive. I’m usually okay with that but here it felt just too dramatic and a tad too titillating. The fact they the characters aren’t likable didn’t phase me. In the past I have loved books and despised the characters.

I’ll bet there are other readers who will enjoy this book for all the reasons I did not. I can see it as a chart topping movie. It just wasn’t for me. So a mere two disappointing stars for a book I had trouble reading until the end. My thanks to CLASH books and Netgalley for and ARC in exchange for my review. Publication date is January 28, 2025.

As someone who to this day still believes Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" to be one of the greatest books of all-time, I've long had no issue with embracing the more challenging, controversial, and perhaps even offensive side of literature.

However, I never could quite immerse myself in the world being created by Elizabeth Ellen in "American Thighs," a book I have no doubt will have an audience and could easily become optioned for cinematic adaptation.

I'm simply not it.

In "American Thighs," Pushcart Award-winner Ellen introduces us to Tatum, a 31-year-old former child star and her journey from Hollywood to Elkhart, Indiana (spelled "Elkheart" in the book, though one hopes this will be corrected as it's distracting).

Tatum spent her early years on various film sets and Hollywood locales, a story we've heard before including the fact that she became impregnated by an award-winning actor fifteen years her senior. Fifteen years after his death, Tatum experiences an existential crisis and ends up leaving behind Hollywood, her mother, and even her 16-year-old daughter and heads toward the Midwest determined to, for the first time, experience a normal high school life.

In its marketing, "American Thighs" is compared to both Tom Perrota's "Election" and the film "Heathers," loose comparisons at best. There is something here, I suppose, as we watch Tatum use her childhood talents to manipulate her way into a life that never feels quite right to anyone around her. She earns a spot on the cheer team, dates a football player, befriends the schools most popular girl, and yet also shows glimpses of an uncommon maternal side and begins to show the cracks of a childhood wildly misspent.

As a reader, I don't need characters I like. This is good. There are none here I particularly cared for at all.

As a reader, I don't necessarily need a world with which I identify. I definitely don't identify with the world here and never once bought into it.

As a reader, I'm willing to be offended (at times, I was), willing to be challenged (on occasion, I was), and willing to embrace the absurdity (I wanted to, however, mostly found it too manipulative to buy into). I could never quite visualize this world, something I really wanted, and thus the little things bothered me - like a misspelled "Elkheart" or the various other little attributes of the story that would actually, in all likelihood, play off well on the big-screen.

I'm leaning into what feels like a generous three-star rating here mostly because I see what Ellen's going for and do think there will be those who connect with this novel. It wasn't for me, something that surprised me, but my hope for any writer is that their book finds the audience it deserves. I have friends to this day who don't understand my love for "American Psycho" and other books with a similar tone. While I'm not one of them, there will be readers who embrace Ellen's relentless, fearless, and at times quite touching story of culture, love, loss, and the absurdity of it all.

This felt like a 90s high school movie mixed with Tampa by Nutting. Predators. Predators everywhere. I was pretty grossed out the entire time. I couldn’t believe everyone’s responses to all of these crazy events. The format was interesting but made it somewhat difficult to stay engaged in the story.

I honestly gave this book a lot of time to get interesting but I had a hard time following the storyline. The description was great but the story didn’t hold my interest.

This is complicated. I don’t know about this one.

Tatum Grant was a child star (c’mon, Tatum?!?! Really?), spending her formative years on location and on various film sets. Then she got pregnant, the father an older, award winning actor.

Fifteen years after the actor’s death Tatum leaves L.A., her mother and daughter and goes off on a search for her authentic self. She uses her daughter’s ID and poses as a sixteen year old high school student at Dobson High School in the hometown of the actor, living the life of a popular teen, because she is Stockard Channing. Oh, wait until the police catch on. And did I mention she is having torrid sex with teachers and MINORS? Because she is. There are predators everywhere. This is one fucked up high school, if you’ll pardon my French. I’m sorry, they don’t offer French? Or any other classes? Because they are busy with cheerleading and sex? Got it.

What, if anything, are we to take from this? Based just on the title I would say it might just be an avenue to portray illicit, predatory sex. I didn’t really see much, if any redeeming roles for any of the mothers and daughters here. There are the LOLITAS of this world, then there is….this. I did like the use of multiple POVs, including real life stars and others in the film industry…so much better than the use of made up names that have no context.

Oh, if someone is going to college on a D1 golf scholarship, maybe they should have, I don’t know, have played golf at some point in the book? Just a thought. This was a bit of a mess.

I did really enjoy this book and found the alternating POVs really interesting but my god it was SO long!

In "American Thighs", former child star 'Tatum' Grant disguises herself as a high school student in order to be able to experience the typical adolescence that she missed out on.

I think the 3 stars is generous, and only slightly warranted for one reason: I kind of needed to know where this trainwreck was heading next so I kept turning the page.

The premise is promising but I found so many other factors unsatisfactory. For starters, despite her crazy backstory, Tatum fails as a protagonist. She's bland (admittedly this is purposeful) and then extremely unlikable. I don't mind unlikable female protagonists! But in this case I don't think it works- from the dedication and the initial part of the book I thought the goal was to create sympathy for celebrities (how they are under constant scrutiny, robbed of a sense of normalcy, etc) but Tatum makes this very difficult for reasons that would 100% be a spoiler (a predictable one at that). My main issue in fact is entirely tied to that exact spoiler - I think it's a heavy topic not handled very well.

My other criticism are a bit more due to personal preference: the bouncing between POVs get tiring/repetitive and makes it hard to care about any characters initially; I found the book to drag a bit and like it could do with a cut so that could be a factor as to why. Also slightly petty but I found the references to real life celebs lazy and not very relevant in 2024- do actual 15 year old girls still care about Demi Lovato?

The book could still probably find its own niche audience but overall I found it an uncomfortable yet dull read. I think some of the themes presented are interesting and worth discussing: the cycle of abuse; trauma; the difference in the way a male abuser is treated compared to a female abuser. I just don't think this book does a good job of having that discussion to be honest.

I received this free advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and feedback.

American Thighs is primary the story of two women, Anissa Grant/Tatum and Taylor Ragner. Anissa is a former child actress that leaves her family and life behind in California bound for a small town in Indiana. Elkhart, IN is where Taylor is the fifteen year old most popular girl in town. The quintessential cheerleader dating the quarterback. Told in a variety of voices the story traces events as Tatum poses as high school sophomore, sixteen instead of her real age of thirty.

This book just wasn’t for me. The plot was interesting but the constant staccato formed by bouncing between characters POVs in such short bursts made it hard to initially get interested in these characters. I think lengthening and developing some of these passages would have been much less jarring.

There is a lot of overt sexualization in this book and a good bit of misogyny. The teen boys and men sexualize the girls and the girls sexualize themselves. I think the author was making a point by making this such a constant part of the storytelling, but it did begin to feel excessive. It also took a good half of the book before the action picked up. As I said, this book was just not my my cup of tea.

I received this free advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and feedback.

American Thighs - I wasn’t sure if the title were a tribute to the song.
A child star grows up, though she was never allowed to be a child in the first place.
One of the most interesting aspects of the premise is available in the blurb, though I hope you forget about it by the time you start reading this book, just for the thrill.
I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I trust Ellen’s creativity, I liked the premise, the themes, the vibes and the setting.
The abrupt cuts to different and surprise POVs is exciting, though the style, and the execution did not let these characters and the concept to live up to its full potential. The nuances and layers are a bit lacking. It is possible that some of the choices were deliberate and part of the humour/criticism, and might be appealing to the TikTok gen, though I wanted something else.

Thank you for the advance copy. I appreciate it.

American Thighs by Elizabeth Ellen is an absolute standout. The writing is raw, honest, and unapologetically real, making it a book that lingers long after you finish. Elizabeth Ellen has a unique voice that captures the complexities of life, love, and identity in a way that feels intimate and universal. The characters are vividly drawn, and their stories are full of emotion and depth. Every page is filled with sharp observations and powerful moments that resonate deeply. American Thighs is a must-read if you’re looking for a book that challenges, provokes, and ultimately moves you.

Super easy to get lost in! Celebs, gossip, relationships, and more! I enjoyed it! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.