Mommywood by Tori Spelling, Hilary Liftin

From the Publisher

With the same down-to-earth wit that made her entertaining memoir sTORI Telling a #1 New York Times bestseller, Tori Spelling tells the hilarious and humbling stories of her life as a mom in the limelight.

Tori Spelling might have grown up with everything a girl could wish for, but these days, she's just another suburban working mom...whose toddler regularly recognizes her in the pages of Us Weekly. Welcome to Mommywood, where the stars are two feet tall and your neighbors know who you are before you move in.

Like most parents, Tori wants her children to have the one thing she didn't have as a kid -- a normal family. On their hit Oxygen reality show, Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, the starlet and her husband Dean McDermott regularly wrestle dirty diapers, host the neighborhood block party, and tackle temper tantrums on the red carpet. But when the cameras aren't rolling, Tori's still having awkward run-ins with a former 90210 costar at a Laser Tag birthday party, scooping rogue poo out of the kiddie pool on a resort vacation, and racing to win back her pre-baby body before the media starts calling her fat. For all her suburban fantasies, Tori Spelling is no June Cleaver.

From learning to be the kind of parent her own mother never was to revealing what it's like to raise a family while everyone is watching, Mommywood is an irresistible snapshot of celebrity parenthood that you won't get from the paparazzi.

Publishers Weekly

From the opening ultrasound scene, in which Spelling frets that her unborn son's nose is too big, through her two bouts coping with baby weight and numerous shopping sprees, the memoir focuses heavily on appearances. What rescues the book from complete narcissism are Spelling's sense of humor—which is truly fun and alive to irony—and her obvious love for her small children. Listeners will respond to her desire to create a “real” life for them, even as they raise eyebrows at her decision to have their childhoods broadcast on reality television. Spelling narrates with a chatty Valley Girl style and loads of inflection and drama—whether or not the circumstances warrant it. (A scene about showing up with the wrong Halloween costume at a party is delivered with the same agitation as one in which her baby loses consciousness from a seizure.) A Simon Spotlight Entertainment hardcover. (May)

Library Journal

The somewhat disjointed anecdotes that actress (Beverly Hills 90210), reality star (Tori & Dean), and No. 1 New York Times best-selling author (sTORI Telling) Spelling shares in this self-read memoir come across as whiny, only mildly amusing, and ultimately flat. Her contempt for her mother, Candy, is rampant, as are her trying reminders of how normal her life is. Despite these shortcomings, however, the production quality is excellent, and Mommywood is likely to have wide appeal given the success of Spelling's previous aforementioned memoir and her Oxygen Network reality show, currently in its fourth season. [Audio clip and video interview with the author available through audio.simonandschuster.com; the Simon Spotlight Entertainment hc, published in April, was a New York Times best seller and an LJ Best Seller.—Ed.]—Nicole A. Cooke, Montclair State Univ. Lib., NJ

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