\u201cEvery movie romance needs an Obstacle, a reason the characters don\u2019t naturally fall into each other.\u201d In the off-screen romance between actors Juniper Castillo and Kai Laramie, the obstacle is a moving target. Juniper notices early on that as flirty and forward as Kai is, he seems \u201cclosed off to a romantic connection\u201d; that turns out to be the tip of a very problematic iceberg. The two meet in the lobby of a Pittsburgh hotel where they will be spending the evening with Matthew Malone, the megastar playing Andy Warhol in a movie they\u2019re about to begin shooting, Andy Warhol Never Gets Old. Kai has been cast as Andy\u2019s intern, Juniper as a journalist who gets in over her head. This is Juniper\u2019s first adult role after a long run as a Nickelodeon child star, and newcomer Kai\u2019s first role of any kind. Green evokes in compelling detail all the phases and aspects of the film project, from the table read to the screening of the rough cut, from the social media fanfare to the public premiere and the press junket, moving back and forth between Juniper\u2019s and Kai\u2019s first-person perspectives. In a meeting with one of the ubiquitous publicists, Kai learns that somehow \u201cthe high school stuff\u201d he never talks about\u2014despite their growing inseparability and seemingly profound connection, he hasn\u2019t even brought himself to share it with Juniper\u2014has surfaced. Details emerge slowly, then blow up in the media; the book\u2019s third act focuses on the destructive potential of celebrity culture in a climate that makes Warhol\u2019s milieu look innocent by comparison. After a long break from writing fiction\u2014his last two books were Everything Is Tuberculosis (2025) and The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021)\u2014Green fills this novel with carefully observed details of Hollywood culture and characters, including running jokes about vegan cuisine, media training, and the way Kai\u2019s agent constantly and boorishly consults his young female assistant on points of political correctness. Can he talk about \u201chot girls\u201d? Can he quote T.S. Eliot? OK to say \u201cdog vomit\u201d?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cEvery movie romance needs an Obstacle, a reason the characters don\u2019t naturally fall into each other.\u201d In the off-screen romance between actors Juniper Castillo and Kai Laramie, the obstacle is a moving target. Juniper notices early on that as flirty and forward as Kai is, he seems \u201cclosed off to a romantic connection\u201d; that turns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385"}],"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=7385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}