Chore Whore: Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant

Certain passages from Heather Howard's Chore Whore: Adventures of a Celebrity Personal Assistant lead one to believe that the author was trying to write a humorous public service announcement about the horrors (not whores) of becoming a personal assistant. Corki Brown, a long-suffering single mom with a handful of famously hard-to-please bosses, navigates a crazy world of gun-toting movie stars, Atkins diets, and hard-to-find toilet seats, all for less money than she really deserves. Howard apparently had a lengthy career as an assistant herself, so that toilet seat story would very well be based in reality. With terrifying tales like this lining bookstore shelves, it's a wonder the real rich and famous can still hail cabs, let alone find people desperate enough to wait on them full time.

The title Chore Whore might suggest that Howard would consider turning a critical eye towards those willing to take humiliating, low-paying work for the privilege of being close to celebrity. Say the type of person who looks at these positions not as regular jobs, but as literary internships to a career writing Chick Lit. No such luck, of course. The sins are all the side of fictional celebrities. (Don't worry--no actual famous people's reputations were harmed in the publishing of this book.) Howard is fine as writer; she makes the pages turn. One only wonders if books from this tell-all-style, assistant-fiction genre will hold up as well as some of the films made by the celebrities they criticize. --Leah Weathersby