Review: Bring the House Down

Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm afraid that this book was not for me. Perhaps it's my age?

I went into it with certain expectations, and those were not reached. This book was filled with over-inflated egos, sarcasm of the nasty kind, and Me Too whiners. I'm not of the generation that appreciates the me-too's - I think they just want their five minutes of fame, but that's probably just me.

I initially thought this was going to be a fun read, and was quickly put in my place. This was a depressing, cruelty-filled read. If I were Hayley, as soon as I read what Alex wrote, I would have gone after his dangly bits with a rusty toenail clipper. NOT because of the critical review, but because he slept with her without thinking about how she would feel when she woke up in his apartment and saw the papers. Used...yes, humiliated... again, yes.

Oddly enough, I just read online some criticism from an 'author' on one and two-star reviews, that we reviewers should be sensitive to the author's feelings. Uhm, if you are that sensitive that a critical or sarcasm-filled review would put you in a depression, then you are in the wrong profession. I b lame the advent of the old-time Vanity Press companies and the ever-popular self-publishing world.

*ARC supplied by the publisher, Doubleday, the author, and NetGalley.

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DESCRIPTION: "Alex Lyons always has his mind made up by the time the curtain comes down at a performance—the show either deserves a five-star rave or a one-star pan. Anything in between is meaningless. On the opening night of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he doesn’t deliberate over the rating for Hayley Sinclair’s show, nor does he hesitate when the opportunity presents itself to have a one-night stand with the struggling actress.

Unaware that she’s gone home with the theater critic who’s just written a career-ending review of her, Hayley wakes up at his apartment to see his scathing one-star critique in print on the kitchen table, and she’s not sure which humiliation offends her the most. So she revamps her show into a viral sensation critiquing Alex Lyons himself—entitled son of a famous actress, serial philanderer, and by all accounts a terrible man. Yet Alex remains unapologetic. As his reputation goes up in flames, he insists on telling his unvarnished version of events to his colleague, Sophie. Through her eyes, we see that the deeper she gets pulled into his downfall, the more conflicted she becomes. After all, there are always two sides to every story.

A brilliant Trojan horse of a book about art, power, misogyny, and female rage, Bring the House Down is a searing, insightful, and often hilarious debut that captures the blurred line between reality and performance.