The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone

This book is sort of written like a celebrity biography.  It's completely fictional, but it is laid out like a true story with the author writing about her own brief, yet memorable, encounter with the subject and how that inspired her to look a little deeper into Addison's life.  I enjoyed this book because it was different from other books I usually read.  There are photographs of the characters throughout the book to further illustrate their personalities and to make it more real.  The story is told through a series of interview entries, without the interviewer presence.  It details the final two years (maybe a little less) of the life of Addison Stone, an up and coming artist already famous in NYC.  She is a very interesting and complex character.  A ticking time bomb that was bound to explode.  He covers her struggles with mental illness (schizophrenia), her manic energy, and thirst for experiencing life.  She didn't feel fear, even when she should have.  She didn't have a great home life and couldn't wait to escape.  When a chance to move to NYC came, she grabbed it and never really looked back.  Too young to be alone in the big city, she didn't always make the best choices.  It details her highly dysfunctional relationships with both friends and lovers.  The interviewees include her long time best friend, Lucy, high school boyfriend, Jonah, a variety of authority figures (parents, teachers, influential people in the art world), as well as New York friends, her brother and two New York boyfriends, Zach and Lincoln, who are both people of interest in her death.  Following her ups and downs was rather entertaining.  She was full of an energy that just sucks you right in.  The author created a very interesting character.  Despite knowing from the beginning that she died, I found myself holding on to the very end wanting to suck up all the details of her story that I could.  It reminds me of those behind the scenes TV True Hollywood Stories or whatever they are called.  This was just like that.  It reminds me of the headlines and stories all over the place telling us details of famous people's lives that I think all of us can't help but read a little, even if we couldn't really care less.  Call it morbid fascination.  That is probably why I liked this book.  It felt like an inside look into the life a young, famous person who died too young.  Guilty pleasure or whatever, it is worth a read.  I enjoyed the various narrators helping piece the story together.  It was a nice change of pace from the normal stuff I read.  If you are looking for something a little less mainstream, perhaps this is it.  Happy reading!