Product Description

Anna David turns her reporter's eye for detail toward Tinseltown's seedy underbelly yet again and "eloquently and humorously unveil[s] what could be a new subgenre: Chick Lit with a Message" (New York Post).

Tired of gathering banal quotes from the B-list on the sidelines of the red carpet, Emma Swanson publicly yearns for a more substantial career but privately dreams of a hotshot boyfriend to transport her into the beating heart of the Hollywood scene. Instead, she meets Jessica—beautiful, cavalier, manipulative—who shamelessly trades sex for the gifts it can bring. Convinced that writing a story about Jessica and her ilk would seriously boost her journalistic cred, Emma soon finds herself sucked into a world where the luxuries of prettied-up prostitution may cost more than she ever expected.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49352 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-01
• Released on: 2009-05-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061669187
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
A struggling journalist covering the L.A. party circuit ponders her price while writing a feature about a high-class hooker in David's misfired follow-up to Party Girl. Emma Swanson, hungry for a promotion at Substance—a local glam rag—is young, ambitious and frustrated with her lowly beat. While researching a potential cover story on yuppie hooking, she meets gorgeous if bitchy call girl Jessica Davis, who introduces Emma to her contemporary version of the world's oldest profession. As Emma's story looks like it might come together (and Jessica showers Emma with expensive gifts), one of Jessica's friends offers Emma the editor-in-chief spot at a magazine he's about to launch. The catch: she's got to give him the hooker story. What follows is a moralizing journey of self-discovery, replete with a Michael Toms–assisted epiphany. David sets up some interesting parallels between selling your soul and selling your body, but the narrative comes off too lightweight and hokily insidery (Ron Burkle is name-checked) to really deliver on them. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Emma Swanson is a frustrated Los Angeles writer working as a party reporter for Substance magazine, which means she lines up outside red-carpet events and tries to get celebrities to give her quotes. She spots an exotic woman at various events and soon learns that Jessica is a professional escort who gets paid in clothes, jewelry, and rent payments. Fascinated by this career choice, and curious about what would make a woman become a professional escort, Emma thinks this would be a spectacular story for Substance. When her pitch is accepted, Emma works on ingratiating herself with Jessica. Jessica is more than willing to help Emma with her story and they become friends as Jessica tells Emma about the escort business and Emma learns how to be bolder and get what she wants. But Jessica won’t do anything without getting something in return, and Emma has to decide exactly how much she’s willing to do for a story and a friendship. David presents a glitzy, glamorous, gossipy novel. --Hilary Hatton

Review
"Trying to pick sides is all part of the fun, as is asking yourself: What would you do to get what you want?...I practically devoured this." ---- Nerve.com

Customer Reviews

Acquired In Exchange
Bought- acquired in exchange for money or its equivalent; purchase.

Bought in this novel is the acquisition of a woman for the evening. The city is Hollywood, the acquisition is high-priced and bought for a variety of reasons. Some men want sex and variety that their wives will not give them. Some men do not want commitment. Some men want kinky sex. Some men want more than one woman at a time. And, on and on.

Emma is a young woman from a small town near LA. She has dreams of being a journalist and works for a magazine providing quotes from celebrities as they walk the line to a major event. It is boring and unsatisfying work and Emma wants more. She would be considered a beautiful woman anywhere but Hollywood. Here, she is just one of many and does not stand out. Like many, Emma brings family issues into her life. Her younger sister is the epitome of beauty and brains and Emma's family has always favored her.

Emma befriends several other would be journalist s and one introduces her to a bevy of beautiful women who show up at parties with a different man each time. Emma learns these women are women of the evening and instead of charging money they are given jewelry, clothes or their Amex card is paid off each month. Emma is fascinated by them and starts conversations with them. She realizes she has a big story here. One of her journalist friends introduces her to Jessica, the most beautiful of them all. Jessica opens up and tells Emma she will introduce her to the business.
Emma has entered a world she is unprepared for, sex, drugs and rock and roll. What she finds is not what she thought. She delves in deeper and her relationship with Jessica takes an interesting turn. The life of the rich and beautiful is not all it seems. Emma realizes she has come to a turn in the road and it is up to her which direction she takes.

'Bought' is an interesting journey through the life of those who take, An inside look into the world of money and a lifestyle we all think we want. This is a simplistic look at these lives, but it is well written and informative. Emma is a young woman with idealism on her side, is it enough?

Recommended. prisrob 05-30-09

Party Girl: A Novel

Gift-wrapped lies
Emma Swanson is an "People magazine" type of reporter, standing at the press lines and hoping to make it in the Hollywood publication market with a feature article. When she lands a terrific scoop about "bought" women in Hollywood - they don't take money for their companionship, but laptops, jewelry, rent, etc. - she's sure to make it. All she has to do is infiltrate the land of those bought women and find out what really goes on there. Her plans go awry when she meets Jessica, the most "bought" of them all, and Danny, a sweetly optimistic Whole Foods employee with whom she forms an almost instant friendship.

I wanted to like this book - Anna David is a talented author, and there's nothing wrong her prose - but the plot didn't seem cohesive. I was drawn into the first few chapters, relating to Emma's desire to break out of the press line and into "real writing," her parents' belief that writing isn't a real job and her insecurities as a not-perfect woman in a world of plastic perfection. By about the middle of the book, however, the coincidences and plot jumps pick up. Emma is wooed from the magazine that is buying her piece with a promise of being the editor-in-chief of a brand-new LA magazine. After her first feature, she'll be editor-in-chief? Emma barely questions this, and seems surprised (then not surprised) when she realizes the slick start-up guy wants a little more than an editor.

Jessica's character seems mildly schizophrenic: sweet and caring, evil and plotting. It's hard to summarize her without giving away key plot points; I'll just say that her background doesn't quite fit with her character, and David doesn't make the connection between who she was and who she is.

Characters appear and disappear, sometimes sticking around for lengthy portions before going away to await the final few chapters (where we basically re-meet every person in the book). I found the end somewhat satisfying, in that it tied everything up, but also unsatisfying, in that the bow was just a little too neat.

I thought I would be irritated with all of the celebrity name-dropping, but it was actually fun to read about people you see on the red carpet and how they act "off-carpet." Emma's desperation and her sarcasm add a lot of substance to the dialogue.

As a character, Emma is likable, if a bit naive. She doesn't want the life her mother has - taking care of her family, art classes and gardening - but she isn't sure what she *does* want, besides independence. Her experiences with the world of bought women helps her - and us - to see that, in many ways, we're all "bought" to some degree, by our jobs, our lives, our experiences. When she tells Jessica "we're a lot alike," she means it, but they're alike in different ways: one cares, one wants.

I loved reading "Bought"
Bought will take you on a wild ride!
Anna David takes us into the world of women who trade sexual favors for gifts. But she was able to bring us into this world through the eyes of Emma, a writer and Jessica, one of these women.
The book will grip you from page 1 until the final letter of the final word. Anna spun the story using her unique writing style and helps brings the reader inside the minds of these women.
Finally we can look in the mirror and realize that we all do exactly the same things in our own way we all have been Bought and Sold

I urge everyone to read "Bought" by the Amazing Anna David !