{"id":4604,"date":"2025-10-28T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=4604"},"modified":"2025-10-28T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T11:00:00","slug":"starred-book-review-bad-dreams-by-jenny-noa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=4604","title":{"rendered":"STARRED Book Review: Bad Dreams by Jenny Noa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bad Dreams<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by Jenny Noa<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Memoir<\/p>\n

ISBN: <\/strong>9798991760904<\/p>\n

Print Length:<\/strong> 282 pages<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reviewed by Amy Brozio-Andrews<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>A funny, sad, and uplifting memoir of chasing dreams, getting lost, and finding yourself in LA<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Can you come of age in middle age? While that typically might be the domain of young adults, Jenny Noa makes it her own in this heartfelt and humorous memoir of loving and letting go in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

While she has been hoping\u2014and honestly, expecting\u2014to make it big in Los Angeles as an actor, it never quite worked out that way. Instead, Noa spent much of her time caring for a terminally ill husband, getting sacked from her job and searching for another, and struggling to understand why the acting roles she had envisioned for herself since childhood still seem so far away. Where had the years of auditions, acting classes, day jobs, and small stage performances gotten her?<\/p>\n

In a series of wide-ranging essays and \u201cBit Parts\u201d that bookend her time in Los Angeles, Noa bares her heart, her soul, her mental health diagnosis, and her unfailing sense of comedy in Bad Dreams: Notes on Life and Los Angeles by a Would-Be Has Been.<\/p>\n

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Early life lessons at home and school rewarded being quiet and not needing anything to the point where grown up Noa isn\u2019t sure she knows how to speak up for herself, although she does a heroic job speaking up for her husband during his illness. Navigating young widowhood and Hollywood is grueling, and yet Jenny presses on, until she doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Unpacking years of trying to be as small and invisible as possible while also desperately hoping to be seen and valued for being special, Noa\u2019s accounting of life in Los Angeles includes honest reckonings of her growing-up years and how their influence has boomeranged through her life.<\/p>\n

She is also candid in the way her husband Mark showed her how special she was to him, and her struggles to adjust to being a \u201cnewlywid.\u201d Noa\u2019s writing is uniquely aligned with creative life in Los Angeles, too: what does special even look like when there are thousands of others chasing the same role?<\/p>\n

With age comes wisdom, they say, and Noa could fill the backyard of the rented home she lovingly describes with all she has learned. Hers is more than a memoir; Bad Dreams is a lifeline for those arriving at that same crossroads. What happens when it appears the life you planned for yourself isn\u2019t panning out, and why? Noa\u2019s conversational writing style is charming and disarming, which makes her essays hit hard and stick with you, yet she never leaves the reader there. She always offers a hand up at the end.<\/p>\n

The tight focus of some of these pieces keeps the reader at arms length at times, but the \u201cBit Parts\u201d are a nice chaser after some of the heavier essays. Noa is nothing if not tender, sincere, and genuinely funny. Her story of searching for creative accomplishment and inner calm in Los Angeles will leave you rooting for her success in her next chapter (and a sequel, I hope).<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t<\/p><\/span>Amazon<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n

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Thank you for reading Amy Brozio-Andrews\u2019s book review of Bad Dreams <\/em>by Jenny Noa! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.<\/p>\n

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The post STARRED Book Review: Bad Dreams by Jenny Noa<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bad Dreams by Jenny Noa Genre: Memoir ISBN: 9798991760904 Print Length: 282 pages Amazon Bookshop Reviewed by Amy Brozio-Andrews A funny, sad, and uplifting memoir of chasing dreams, getting lost, and finding yourself in LA Can you come of age in middle age? While that typically might be the domain of young adults, Jenny Noa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}