Sunday, 14 February 2016

Book ~ "Everyone's Best Friend at Playboy" (2016) Malorie Mackey

From Goodreads ~ What is it like to go from the girl next door to super pin-up or going from the world of pageantry to the world of Playboy? Malorie provides an entertaining read with lots of personal first-hand accounts of what goes on behind the gates at the Playboy Mansion. "Everyone’s Best Friend at Playboy" follows Malorie’s personal journey as a young model through the politics, games, and joys of the Playboy Mansion. Malorie spent four years as Hugh Hefner’s guest at the Playboy Mansion and she has some stories to tell. 

Each day, after she came home from a new adventure, she would sit down and write. Malorie’s manuscript is the result of her diligent diary entries of each and every adventure she had or witnessed at Playboy! Her journey starts with corrupt casting directors, that indirectly got her invited to the Playboy Mansion. It shows the inner politics and daily routine of the Mansion itself, with everything inevitably leading to a falling out with the lady of the manor, Crystal Hefner. There is definitely a great story within those dusty old walls and Malorie does a great job of telling it all.

The author describes herself as "the girl next door" and her dream was to get to the Playboy Mansion.  She wasn't a playmate and had no desire to be one so she had to find someone of influence to get her to the mansion.  She eventually befriends a playmate and gets invited to a movie night in 2011 and spent the next four years as a "guest".  There were weekly movie nights she attended and she ended up befriending Hugh Hefner's wife, Crystal (this doesn't end well).

In the book she said she worked at Bench Warmer ... I'm assuming it's the company that produces trading cards with female models, including playmates.  She didn't say what she did there but whatever it was she had a lot of flexibility as she was able to spend two or three nights a week at the Playboy Mansion plus go to Disneyland often with Crystal.  According to her website, she is an actress and a model.

I found it odd that her dream was to get to the mansion.  From the sounds of it, a "guest" is a mooch or hanger-on.  She would go to the mansion and have supper and then hang around to watch a movie with Hef and the gang.  Where you sat was determined by what Hef and/or Crystal thought of you.  You had to stay in their favour or you would be dropped from the guest list.  This happened a couple times to the author and it was really stressful for her.

Apparently the author would record the events every night in a journal and that's exactly how the book seemed to me ... a diary written by an immature 16-year-old.  She should have had someone professional proofread it.  The writing could have been tighter as there was a lot of repetition of information, sometimes in the same paragraph.  Her use of exclamation points was excessive!!!!!  There were many typos ... here are some examples:  "hints" instead of "hence", "ally" instead of "alley", "quite" instead of "quiet" and "John Lovitz" instead of "Jon Lovitz".  Plus there were a lot of grammatical errors.

What kept me reading this book is (1) I was curious to see what it was like in the Playboy Mansion (the author made it sound very bland ... zzzzzz) and (2) it's a short book (135 pages on my iPad).

This is not a book I would recommend.

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