Thank you to Carrie for bringing our February The Dollhouse Academy book club discussion! This one is buzzy, friends!
Welcome to another crazy winter! Meredith and I have been hunkered down reading some pretty fantastic, engrossing books to avoid any Seasonal Affective Disorder (aptly abbreviated SAD) and emails saying school is canceled!
Hope your winter is going well!
I am super excited to talk about Margarita Montimore’s latest novel, The Dollhouse Academy!
The Dollhouse Academy Book Club Discussion
I could have sworn I had read Oona Out of Order, her 2021 release that got a lot of buzz, but I double checked my Goodreads and it looks like I didn’t. I always love when I find a backlist title to read! They are easy to find in the library!
Back to The Dollhouse Academy … I will say this wasn’t at all what I was expecting. There are essentially two main characters in this story: Ramona and Ivy. Ramona is an up and coming Hollywood star (or is she?) attending the Dollhouse Academy, a prestigious school to help young adults find their place in Hollywood. Ivy is a seasoned actress who attended the Dollhouse Academy and continues to still live on their campus doing acting projects for them.
Ivy’s perspective is that of her diary and I always enjoy these types of reads. They are in first person which sets them apart from the rest of the book and we get to see where Ivy came from and how she ended up at the Dollhouse Academy. We learn pretty quickly that the Dollhouse Academy, located in the Catskills and run by Genevieve Spalding, is not the nurturing school it purports to be, nor is Genevieve Spalding. We know this early on due to Ivy’s diary, so watching Ramona and her friend Grace enter the school appreciative, excited and happy is difficult. We know bad stuff is coming!
This story really explored struggles with identity, body image, and toxic environments. Montimore did a fantastic job describing what these young adults would go through to be famous. There is a base level of sadness reading this book as you watch the main characters essentially fall apart to become famous.
What makes The Dollhouse Academy unique, though, is the dark secret that has been kept from all but a few of the actors. Project Understudy. Without giving anything away, know there is a sort of sci-fi component to the book. What’s really going on at the Dollhouse Academy is beyond just producing stars. There is science involved in what they are doing and disturbing things begin happening. People get suspicious. And the truth will shock you.
While the sci-fi aspect added a thriller-type component to the story, I really enjoyed reading about Ivy, Ramona, and Grace’s experiences with fame and the lengths some are willing to go to for a shot at Hollywood stardom. I frequently wondered if this was a fairly accurate portrayal of real Hollywood, how hard some of these women are pushed, and what is required of them.
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Meredith and I are excited to read our next pick, Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Have you read her last book, Once There Were Wolves? Definitely one of my favorite reads of 2021, so I’m anticipating a fantastic read, releasing on March 4. We’ll be changing our book club format a bit, so make sure you follow along with us on Goodreads and Instagram!
Wild Dark Shore
A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.
Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.
But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late―and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.
A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.
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Thanks to Flatiron Books for copies of The Dollhouse Academy and Wild Dark Shore! All opinions are our own!
Thanks so much for joining our book club discussion! As always, we love hearing your thoughts and opinions! Keep them coming!!
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