Bought

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.

"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Anna David, author of Party Girl and Bought, has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, and Details, among other notable publications. She’s a regular guest on Fox News’s Red Eye and has repeatedly appeared on Today, Hannity, and CNN’s Showbiz Tonight, as well as on numerous other programs on NBC, CBS, MTV, E!, and VH1. She lives in New York.