Diary of a South Beach Party Girl is a bit of an odd duck. It says "a novel" right there on the cover, but the similarities between the main character of Rachel Baum and the author, Gwen Cooper, are so extensive as to make you wonder. I appreciate that often is the case with a firsst novel, but Diary of a South Beach Party Girl seems much more autobiographical than most.
When Rachel moves in with her friend Amy in Miami's South Beach, she finds herself launched into a world more decadent than she ever imagined. With almost constant partying, cocaine use and with a thing for a local career criminal, Rachel's life seems out of control, but it's not, not really. In fact she loves her life, loves the South Beach scene and, following a huge falling out with the treacherous Amy, loves her new "family" of gay best friends. So what's the problem? Well - and this is really the problem with the book - there isn't one.
Diary of a South Beach Party Girl reads much more like memoir than fiction and, as you read on, you find that Rachel and Gwen have so much in common as to make the "a novel" on the cover pretty redundant. Then the acknowledgments include the sentence "Tony also provided an inexhaustible trove of names, dates and descriptions, and it was to him that I turned whenever my own memory was in doubt." But why'd'ya need "memory" to write "a novel"?
I did enjoy Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, I just think I would have enjoyed it more had I not felt misled. There are some great characters - not least the appropriate named John Hood - and the writing is engaging, but I like my novels to have a story, not just be thinly (very thinly) veiled memoir.
Rating: 3/5
Like this? Try Tabloid Love by Bridget Harrison