Brooke loved reading the dishy celebrity gossip rag Last Night. That is, until her marriage became a weekly headline.
Brooke was drawn to the soulful, enigmatic Julian Alter the very first time she heard him perform “Hallelujah” at a dark East Village dive bar.
Now five years married, Brooke balances two jobs—as a nutritionist at NYU Hospital and as a consultant to an Upper East Side girls’ school, where privilege gone wrong and disordered eating run rampant—in order to help support her husband’s dream of making it in the music world.
Things are looking up when after years of playing Manhattan clubs and toiling as an A&R intern, Julian finally gets signed by Sony. Although no one’s promising that the album will ever hit the airwaves, Julian is still dedicated to logging in long hours at the recording studio. All that changes after Julian is asked to perform on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno—and is catapulted to stardom, literally overnight. Amazing opportunities begin popping up almost daily—a new designer wardrobe, a tour with Maroon 5, even a Grammy performance.
At first the newfound fame is fun—who wouldn’t want to stay at the Chateau Marmont or visit the set of one of television’s hottest shows? Yet it seems that Brooke’s sweet husband—the man who can’t handle hot showers and wears socks to bed—is increasingly absent, even on those rare nights they’re home together. When rumors about Brooke and Julian swirl in the tabloid magazines, she begins to question the truth of her marriage and is forced to finally come to terms with what she thinks she wants—and what she actually needs.
The author of The Devil Wears Prada returns with another tale of sex, cynicism, relationship intrigue, and sweet revenge. Last Night at Chateau Marmont charts what happens when a bevy of beautiful celebrity bedmates plot their comeuppance. A splendidly wicked read.
In her fourth novel, the author of The Devil Wears Prada(2003) considers what it would be like if your husband became a rock star. The short answer: not that great.
Everyone agrees Brooke and Julian are the real thing: madly in love and mutually supportive. Theirs is a marriage that could weather anything, except maybe the toxic storm of modern celebrity. Julian, a singer-songwriter, is in the final stages of recording his album for Sony. He's still an unknown but has a following in Manhattan, which includes his wife Brooke, who first fell in love watching him sing at a dive bar. She works 60 hours a week as a nutritionist (at a hospital and part time at an elite girl's school) all to help Julian achieve his dream. Then fame comes like an avalanche. A Tonight Show appearance pushes his single up the charts, and what follows—more TV appearances, a Vanity Fair cover, endless traveling, starlet photo ops—is just the stuff to weaken a marriage. Brooke becomes a nag, and meek Julian, manipulated by his sleazy manager, is transformed into an overworked brat (albeit one with a superior wardrobe). Brooke can't take time off from work, so they spend weeks apart, and when they're together, everything between them seems different. Then come the vicious articles in the gossip rags, insinuating there is trouble in their marriage, which unsurprisingly brings trouble to their union. The novel has difficulty convincing the reader that any sane woman would behave as Brooke does—refusing to take a sabbatical from her 60-hour work week, passing on a romantic Italian vacation, stubbornly refusing to live it up with her husband. By the end she realizes she is as much to blame for their relationship's collapse as those compromising photos of Julian and a floozy at the Chateau Marmont. Only a miracle, or maybe some simple compromise, can get Brooke and Julian back together.
A sudsy insider's look at the celebrity machine—and the cruel world it creates.
"Weisberger has insightful takes about the price of success in our celebrity-obsessed culture" —Publishers Weekly
"The perfect end-of-summer romp" —BookPage
"A good antidote to summer TV — it's a haunting look at what might happen if your life became a reality show but you never signed off on the cameras" —Entertainment Weekly
"Learn about the dark side of the limelight in this latest novel from The Devil Wears Prada chick-lit maestro Lauren Weisberger" —Star
“If you like reading tabloid magazines, tracking the latest celebrity hookups, or are a fan of Weisberger's books, then Last Night at Chateau Marmont is the book for you.” —Associated Press
“Her fourth novel provides the same kind of authentic peek into a rarified sub-culture that Prada did...as fervently flippable as a gossip magazine” —USA Today
“Weisberger gets the star-making machine right, and the little details that make up the essence of the couple’s relationship feel poignant and true” —People
