2. The Truth About Diamonds by Nicole Richie

If you know me, then you know that celebrity tell-alls are right up my alley. I am embarrassingly well informed about celebrity "news," pop culture and the like. What can I say? It's my one vice, aside from caffeine. So when I first heard that Nicole Richie was writing a novel, I knew that I wanted to read it. For whatever reason, I never made a point to when it first came out and only remembered this when I read the Fug Girls' take on Lauren Conrad's thinly veiled, "fictional" account of a young girl who moves to Los Angeles, books a reality TV show and finds out who her true friends are. As luck would have it, my local library had a copy of the three-year-old novel so I was all set.

The Truth About Diamonds turned out to be a bizarre hybrid of fiction and autobiography. The narrator is the real-life Nicole Richie, who describes the rise, fall and subsequent rise from the ashes of her fictional friend Chloe Parker. Nicole and Chloe are eerily similar: both were adopted as toddlers by famous musicians, both dabbled in drugs, and both had a fame-whore "friend" who convinced them to do reality TV. When the book jacket promised a story "through the eyes of the captivating Chloe and the talented voice of Nicole Richie," I had no idea that meant that Nicole was part of the story. This creative choice isn't too distracting once you realize what's going on, but it's a strange way to go about the story-telling in my opinion.

The novel itself is not bad nor badly written. It's dishy without trying too hard. Sure, it's pretty lightweight as novels go, but that's to be expected. I would definitely recommend it for a couple of hours of harmless fun.

Oh, and in case you were wondering the truth about diamonds is that while they signify wealth, they can represent so much more: love, commitment, family. Thank you, Nicole Richie, for that life lesson.