Belle in the Big Apple
Aug 8, 2008
Belle in the Big Apple
Author: Brooke Parkhurst
ISBN: 0743296966
ISBN-13: 9780743296960
Format: Hardcover, 224pp
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
Pub. Date: September 16, 2008
This is a story that makes the television news industry look very, very ugly. So ugly in fact, that I have a hard time watching a newscast now, thinking of what might be going on behind the scenes.
Belle is a newspaper reporter for a Southern newspaper that her grandaddy just happens to own. Belle also happens to be a very sheltered, very well off...........Southern Belle. She is very used to her cook bringing her breakfast in bed, she and her mother shopping all day long in swank stores, who's every little whim taken care of.
But she wants more. She wants to be a reporter/writer in her own right, not just because she's related to the newspaper's owner.
So she heads off to the Big Apple.
Here she finds no work, no man that doesn't turn into a complete sleaze, no respect. Luckily she does find a few friends who are actually decent folk.
She finally turns to her grandaddy to use a few contacts and get her an interview. He does find her one - at a CCN type of 24 hour television station instead of a newspaper.
The rest of this book is dealing with her decisions - does she get sucked into this nasty, backstabbing, loathsome type of crowd and climb and scratch her way up the ladder, or does she attempt to maintain her respectability and moral character. Along with this decision making process is the fact that she fears she won't ever find a man who's not a pervert.
As an interesting sidebar, when Belle remembers fondly her cook's favorite dishes, she throws in the recipe. You could almost keep this book in your kitchen bookshelf when you've finished reading it so that you can reference the recipes.
