Review of Hollywood, Ending by John Green

In John Green's stellar first novel for adults, flickers of his emotionally intelligent, nuanced young-adult character-building come through in Kai and Juniper, two fascinating, layered up-and-coming movie stars who struggle with their own demons as they try to live authentically amid the crush of Hollywood pressures.

“I do not want to want to be loved by strangers, but I do not want to want most of what I want.”

In John Green's first novel written for adults, he presents Kai and Juniper, two up-and-coming actors who are about to hit it big in a movie alongside an established star.

The behind-the-scenes fictional view of movie-making was fascinating; I was fully immersed in all of this and loved this element. In laying bare the various forces, tedium, manipulation, money, power imbalances, and pure joy of acting that go into making the fictitious film in the novel, Green explores the crush of fame, the subsumption of the true self, and the culture's relentless desire for information, all of which might threaten to break an actor in the limelight who is seeking to live authentically.

The characters struggle with newfound fame, including preserving their own memories while endlessly telling press-tour media the stories that make up their lives. What is real? What is a story? What can be kept for themselves? What do they owe the public of their private lives?

Agents, producers, other actors, reporters, and the general public make demands, and while the emerging stars recognize their privilege, they waver under conflicting demands. Yet their love for and seeming talent for acting buoy them; their touching, growing affection and connection serve as ballast for one another amid the upheaval and everchanging rules.

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, 'So what.'”

The love story in Hollywood, Ending illustrates the seeming impossibility of finding one's self while in the pervasive public eye--and while caught between others' conflicting needs, desires, demands, and plans.

"You survive, and you survive, until one day, you survived."

The Obstacle keeping apart our main protagonists feels layered, appropriately complicated, and immense. Green is so gifted with nuance and building heartbreakingly flawed, irresistibly complex characters working through the messy business of life. Green allows for growth, but nothing is too easy or clean. I was rooting for Kai and Juniper throughout, but I wasn't confident as to where they would end up.

This is gorgeous John Green writing, and I love a behind-the-scenes peek into a closed world. I'll read anything John Green writes, and I adored this novel.

More Books for You to Check Out

You might also be interested in the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Romantic Novels Set in the World of TV and Movies.

John Green is also the author of the excellent nonfiction work Everything Is Tuberculosis, the collection of essays The Anthropocene Reviewed (which was one of my six favorite nonfiction reads the year I read it) as well as the young adult novels An Abundance of Katherines, Turtles All the Way Down, The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns.

And for my full review of both books in John Green's brother Hank Green's wonderful Carls series, please see An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor.