My 15 Minutes

L.A. denizen Julie Jormano, 24 and a size 12 in a land of size 2s, waits tables at Junebugs, her boss a lisping, mean-spirited woman-hater. Two friends lift her spirits, the slutty, foul-mouthed Billie, a girl she's known from grade school; and her ornery half-pit bull, half-Rottweiler, Riley. The day she moves into her new apartment, she discovers one of her neighbors is Chad Downing, the blond American movie star (think Brad Pitt) who's been Julie's dream boy forever and is covertly renting the apartment to research an upcoming role. A twist of fate brings them together in public, and when paparazzi photos of the pair spike Chad's popularity, his publicist arranges a fake romance that will charm a public anxious to see a waitress gets her 15 minutes of fame. Julie's in heaven, but she has yet to learn that Chad is not the charmer he seems. In fact, the Junebugs customer she's been flirting with-tattooed Tyler, ""tall and slim, with spiky black hair and killer green eyes""-might actually be the man she's meant to be with. Marred by the blithe frankness of Julie's talk on sex and excrement, which almost overpowers the book's charms, this is nevertheless an engaging satire of fame and modern romance.