Fresh from the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, Amy Asbury is at a crossroads. The grunge scene took over and left her hair band crowd in the dust. Where to go? What to do? It was as if a three year long party had just been broken up and no one remembered where they lived. Everyone was left with an identity crisis. Those who turned to drugs found themselves spinning out of control, especially Amy’s friend Birdie.
The Sunset Strip girls migrated into the mainstream LA club scene and took over the VIP rooms. Read about lots of run-ins with 1990’s stars like Anna Nicole Smith, Pamela Anderson, and many others. What happened inside the clubs? Read about the insane nights of young twenty-somethings on the loose in Los Angeles.
When Amy became overwhelmed by LA, she headed for Aspen, Colorado. Read about the total chaos inside the closed doors of Aspen ski lodges, where cocaine was king. The death of a close friend caused her to sink into an ugly depression. Will she turn to drugs to comfort herself?
This is a true story of a girl in Los Angeles, trying to survive on her looks and struggling with her identity. It is about using drugs and alcohol to cover up pain and humiliation. Can she find happiness in the emptiest, numbest city in the world?
A quote from page 146: “Los Angeles makes me sad. It’s like confetti covered quicksand. You don’t notice you are sinking, because there is always a party going on around you, so sensationally slick and fun.”
Amy finds herself lost, not sure where to turn now that her party scene on the Sunset Strip has officially been taken over by the grunge movement. Does she stick around and become a washed up has-been, does she move? No. She does the only thing that she can think of to keep the party going; she redefines herself and makes new friends who are tuned into the new LA club scene. She manages to make herself an “it-girl” in the club scene, and continues the constant party that her life has become over the past three years. Her life is just as chaotic now as it was during the glam rock scene, which actually surprised me. She’s still hanging out with dancers, getting blackout drunk, obsessing about her looks, and having frequent celebrity run-ins with people such as Tommy Lee, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt LeBlanc, and Anna Nicole Smith.
She finally moves to Aspen, Colorado after having a breakdown, losing a number of her close friends, and trying to distance herself from her friend Birdie, who is now a full blown heroin junkie. As she takes in Aspen, she quotes “I half expected some yodeling son of a bitch to zoom by me on a bobsled or the Von Trapps from The Sound of Music to come frolicking over the mountaintops.” That made me giggle : ) She quickly finds the party scene in Aspen, at which time she finds out the drug of choice that everyone seems to be doing there is cocaine. One guy actually deals coke to his own parents! His own parents! Is this real life?! I was continually shocked reading this book, and I really thought after reading The Sunset Strip Diaries that nothing in this book would wow me the way the stories in that book did; I was wrong.
The stories in this book are just as ridiculous, which just goes to show you that even though the glam rock scene on the Sunset Strip died, Amy still found a way to keep her party alive. It was kind of mindboggling just how much energy she put into completely revamping her look, attitude, and trying not to look “white trash” just so she could keep partying with the “in-crowd.” When one of her close friends died, I was a little bit heartbroken. I kind of had an inkling it was coming, but I just didn’t want to believe it.
Like I said in my review of The Sunset Strip Diaries, Amy’s writing style makes you feel like you’re right there with her experiencing all of this craziness first hand. It’s captivating, scandalous, and incredibly delicious.
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