Hayley Aldridge is still here : a novel

Hayley Aldridge is still here A novel

Elissa R. Sloan

Book - 2023

It's been years since anyone really thought about Hayley Aldridge. A child star turned television royalty, Hayley spent years in Hollywood partying and being plastered across the front page of all the tabloids before quietly disappearing after a whirlwind marriage and divorce and very public breakdown. Once the tabloids wrung every last drop out of the drama, they moved on to the next It Girl. But Hayley is still here. For over a decade, she's been trapped in a conservatorship and had every aspect of her life controlled by her parents. She goes nowhere, does nothing without their approval, which is rarely granted. Her visits with her kids are monitored, her fan mail is censored, and she's a prisoner in her own home. She thoug...ht things might change once she was well enough to work, but the restrictions got even tighter as she continued to bring money in, the only thing her parents ever really cared about. Hayley is beginning to realize that this nightmare is her actual life. And she's sick of it. When the hashtag #helphayley starts to emerge on social media, and the public starts thinking critically about what happened to her all those years ago, there's finally some momentum on her side. With an upcoming court date to review the status of the conservatorship, Hayley might finally have a chance to break free. But how can she go up against her parents when they're aware of her every move? It's time for Hayley Aldridge to remind the world who she is, this time on her own terms.

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Subjects
Actresses > Fiction.
Conservatorships > Fiction.
Bildungsromans.
Genres
Bildungsromans
Published
New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers [2023]
Language
English
Main Author
Elissa R. Sloan (author)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
"P.S. Insights, Interviews & More..."--Cover.
Includes P.S. Insights, Interviews & More... with reading group guide and discussion questions.
Physical Description
330, 10 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9780063225527
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Hayley Aldridge, a child star turned powerhouse actress, seems to have everything. However, she's trapped in a conservatorship that allows her parents to control everything she does. In a series of monologues to her twin daughters, Hayley tells the story of how she rose to fame, swirled out of control, and finally came to be locked in her own home. Hayley's story is incredibly familiar, and Sloan uses thoughtful cultural touchstones to enhance the reality of her experience. Despite feeling used by friends and family, Hayley has a mind of her own and is strong, savvy, and brave. Sloan's fascinating examination of late-nineties and early-aughts celebrity culture feels equally authentic and terrifying. Hayley represents not only Britney Spears (her most obvious inspiration), but so many other young women whose fame was dependent on a beautiful face, a slim body, and bankable headlines. While not exactly a modern-day Valley of the Dolls, Hayley Aldridge Is Still Here does make an effective argument that audiences should be more thoughtful about the kinds of media they consume.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Britney Spears provides the inspiration for the spirited latest from Sloan (The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes). Hayley Aldridge is just a girl from small-town Texas when she's pushed into show business by her mother. At seven, in 1991, she lands on a popular TV talent show. Her success leads her parents to view Hayley less as a daughter and more as a meal ticket, providing Porsches for her father and expensive Hermès handbags for her mother. In the present day, Hayley recounts her experiences to her twin daughters, Jessica and Jane, 17, detailing years of financial abuse and control by her parents, film directors who hit on her while she was underage, flirtations with drugs and alcohol, an unhealthy body image, a good friend's death, and her parents' decision to put her into conservatorship in 2007 so they can control her money. As Hayley tells her story, her daughters help make it go viral with a #HelpHayley campaign. Sloan does a great job portraying Hayley's grasping, opportunistic parents, and the twisty plot never lets up. Readers will devour this. Agent: Kelly Van Sant, KT Literary. (Feb.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Those who followed the struggles of Britney Spears as a young star and mother and watched as she endured a decades-long conservatorship will no doubt find similarities in Sloan's second novel (after The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes). Hayley Aldridge falls into acting at a young age, nabbing a starring role in a '90s family sitcom and quickly becoming a household name. Soon she gets swept up in the trappings of young stardom: being the family breadwinner at the age of 10; drugs and addictions around every corner; troubled family dynamics and toxic friendships; being forced to grow up too fast. Like the aforementioned blond starlet, Hayley's out-of-control life lands her in a conservatorship and under her parents' rule with little way out. As in in real life, some of the stories Hayley tells are hard to imagine and difficult to read but will genuinely make readers care about her. Even when she is making mistakes, they will root for Hayley until the very end. VERDICT This is a perfect, unputdownable book for fans of celebrity gossip and pop-culture fiction.--Whitney Bates-Gomez

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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