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Suspend reality and dive into the “The Dollhouse Academy,” an addictive thriller by Margariita Montimore. It’s a heck of a lot of fun, overlaid with trepidation as Ramona and Grace, best friends and show business hopefuls, bite off more than they can chew when fame waves its alluring promises in their pretty faces.
The attractive young women are over the moon when they get notice they’ve been accepted into the Dollhouse Academy, a prestigious, highly selective residential program held on a gorgeous campus that offers singing, dancing and acting lessons. The academy is “elite and secretive,” turning out “star quality” for the hit TV show “In the Dollhouse,” which gave birth to superstar Ivy, whose 18-year career has made her face recognizable the world over. Ramona and Grace are longtime fans of the show, have dreamed of being “Dolls” since they were little girls.
Chapters detail Ramona and Grace’s experiences as newcomers to the academy and in diary entries from veteran Ivy’s diary. In the first entry, Ivy writes about having her life threatened twice, once in a 1998 bus accident and on a flight back from her 4-country press tour. An anxious flyer, Ramona’s terrorized when the private plane she’s on, with a group of businessmen connected to the academy, makes an emergency landing. It turns out the scary scenario was a set up to threaten Ivy, to show her what could happen if she didn’t continue acting “In the Dollhouse.”
Readers immediately know what Ramona and Grace don’t—that the Dollhouse Academy steals free will, manipulates its actors, and puts entrants in harm’s way. At the helm of this monster enterprise is the legendary Genevieve Spalding, a former child star and founder of The Dollhouse Academy, a woman who makes Disney’s Cruella De Vil look like Goldilocks. She’s a bad ass supervisor, but “one of the most important women in show business.” A master at game-playing, Genevieve establishes trust by coddling the academy’s actors then repeatedly tears them down. She pits Ramona and Grace against one another and makes demands on them to diet, take pills, consent to odd physical tests and agree to plastic surgery, all ploys to ensure they’ll be superstars like Ivy.
As Ramona and Grace’s daily lives become increasingly strange and perilous, Ivy’s suspicions grow after a man she’s fallen in love with comes to a bad end. “The Dollhouse” is engrossing from first page to last, the tension growing as readers pull for the young stars to wake up before it’s too late, and for Ivy to escape from the celebrity that’s enslaved her.
In the author’s acknowledgements, Montimore notes that it was her fascination with child stars of past that prompted her to write “The Dollhouse Academy,” real actors often subjected to inhumane treatment at the hands of directors and a demanding, adoring public hungry to see their favorites on the silver screen.
Montimore previously wrote “Oona Out of Order,” a “Good Morning America” Book Club Pick.
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