3.5 stars

I really enjoyed the writing and think this book is extremely well written, it documents the main characters emotions very well - especially following a major trauma. I felt like I could connect with Rose, the denial, the guilt following the event. It’s all so well written!! My only issue is Rose just isn’t a likeable character? I guess you could argue she acts the way she does because of what happened to her but I’m not too sure tbh. This isn’t a book to read if you’re easily triggered by SA as this is obviously the central theme.

I was really excited about Gold Rush because I admire the author a lot and I found that it was a very brave novel. I didn't connect with Rose, the main character and found her interactions a bit flat. Howevrt, I think people will find very interesting to read this kind of story that happens amongst the mid of the #MeToo movement.

A gorgeous story following celebrity culture and consent, with an equally stunning cover 😍
The book had me hooked from the beginning and I devoured the rest in just a few days.
The reader is almost forced to think about the uncomfortable questions that a lot of us would rather avoid.

Set in 2017, Rose works at an Uber fashionable publishing company and as part of her job she mixes with the famous and infamous, including heart-throb pop star, the terribly named Milo Jax.
She spends a drunken night with him, waking up to find him gone and her bed and legs covered in blood. She can’t remember what happened.
He ghosts her and for most of the book, she obsesses over trying to contact him, ostensibly to find out what happened that night. But, her response to that night is part angry, part panic attacks and, confusingly, part obsessively checking his social media posts and online mentions of him.

This book made me feel very uncomfortable. Not necessarily because of the contentious issues it brings up but because I felt that these important issues were completely swamped by how horribly vile the social media-fuelled celebrity scene and everyone involved, even at peripheral levels, were.

I’m guessing that ‘Gold Rush’ was a purposeful indictment of the vacuity of ‘celebrity’. So as a reader, I was supposed to feel a revulsion.
I’m not on any social media, nor do I look at it (apart from the occasional scrolling in Twitter) - so the world portrayed in Gold Rush was completely alien to me. However, even if not actively engaged with or on social media, you’d need to be a hermit not to have any understanding of what it’s like.
So, after reading this, I wasn’t quite sure what I should have taken away from it.
One take away was that I won’t be seeking out similar books in the future. Just not for me at all.

I don’t know why I’m reading a book published in 2024 that should have come out and been forgotten about in 2019 lmaoo, but here we are, I guess.

I’d say that if you truly want to know me, all you have to do is think of that creepy clown from IT luring children into the sewers with nothing but a couple of fucking balloons except my clown is the publishing industry and my balloons are pretty covers. I am superficial like that and yet, my superficiality doesn’t even come close to matching this novel’s shallow attempt at unravelling a topic as timely, important, and affecting as sexual abuse and the entertainment industry’s decade-long involvement in it.

Because I know there are enough fools out there who would confuse my negative rating of this novel with a negative opinion of the themes themselves, I want to clarify: I support the #metoo movement though I’m aware of its mistakes, I will always rather believe an SA survivor than accused perpetrators, and, regarding the topic of sexual abuse, you can definitely miss me with the “innocent until proven guilty” bs.

Now that is out of the way, I gotta say that I have no idea why this book has come out now, in 2024, two to three years after the #metoo movement has gloriously failed to achieve most of the things it set out to do. The whole novel felt so stale, so tired, it doesn’t contribute anything new to the picture, its writing is unadventurous, undaring, and weak, and though it tries hard, it comes across as one-dimensional and flat, conveying its ambitious message linking the blackout sex rape of a twenty-something PR specialist by the most famous man on the planet to celebrity culture, sexism, and consent in a way that is neither smart nor entertaining.

The novel feels TIRED. Yes, it’s set in 2017, just shortly before the NYT Weinstein article broke, yes, as a society we still place too much faith in celebrities and some of us, after all this time, find a pathological sort of joy in maintaining parasocial relationships with celebrities who literally couldn’t care less, but this novel came out right in the middle of the blockout 2024 movement that saw millions of everyday social media users block celebrities over their silence on Gaza and Palestine, and as such, it didn’t add anything to add to my already disillusioned, realistic imagination of the entertainment industry’s depravity. Yeah, Hollywood is a shithole and so is the entire entertainment industry, tell me something I don’t know 🙄

To help create a glitz and glamour world believable enough for our main character to rub shoulders with famous stars, A-list celebrities, gossips, and rumour treadmills, the novel is set in the real world, with enough tired references to “Leonardo DiCaprio”, “Martin Scorsese” and “Lord of the Rings” to give it that “showbiz feel”.

Setting a novel in the real-world entertainment industry without having it come across as goofy is hard enough; creating a fictitious world-famous pop star so famous, that Rose can’t go anywhere without being confronted with his face or his music, is even harder. It’s ridiculously hard. It’s difficult enough in real life to wrap your head around the fact that people with that much money and fame exist and that they are being lusted after. Even more difficult to create a character who on the page is supposed to exude the same draw and irresistible je-ne-sais-quoi as a real-life celebrity.

"Meanwhile, Oliver was now negotiating with a British actor Rose vaguely recognised from a Lord of the Rings film. Evidently, he hadn’t done the red carpet and had just arrived to present the award to the best newcomer in film, which was going to a teenage girl who’d been cast in a Tarantino flick."

It’s okay, you can say Orlando Bloom, we can all do the math. 🙄 Where at times, some actors’ names are explicitly mentioned, at other times, their referencing seems to remain deliberately opaque for reasons I can’t make sense of. I cannot say what irritated me more: the clumsy name-dropping or the half-arsed attempt at lending Rose’s workplace and the novel’s entire setting a shred of credibility.

There are other “thinly veiled” references the novel doesn’t have the guts to attribute to a named person, such as:

Who’s the interview with?’ asked Annabelle.
Minnie said the name and the room gasped in unison. ‘I know. It’s brilliant they landed him on the cover in the first place. But he got drunk in the interview and said something slightly questionable about his much younger female co-star. So … we’re in discussions with lawyers.’
‘At least he didn’t say he wanted to grab her by the pussy,’ Oliver sniggered.
Rose’s body clenched at the word.
‘No,’ sighed Minnie. ‘Nothing quite as vile as the current leader of the free world, thankfully."

This passage so perfectly encapsulates what annoyed me about the novel’s creation of a celebrity-centered fictional space. The famous interview is referred to only by his pronouns, the room gasping “in unison” when Minnie says “the name” faker than fake. Why you can’t even address 34-times convicted felon Donald Trump with his given name but instead avoid it as if you were doing the limbo and his name was the low bar you are not allowed to touch, is beyond me.

In general, the entire novel reads so cheaply not only because of the writing but because of how the third-person narration is handled. Nothing is left to the imagination, everything is either explained or over-explained, readers are spoon-fed, and not an ounce of polysemy can be found throughout the entire text.

"The party had been limping on for hours when Rose realised she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. This was entirely accidental and would often happen on event days."

"Pippa had met her fiancé, Mike, at Glastonbury. Rose had only met him once. An insurance broker with a permanently ruddy face and protruding belly, he was hardly in line with the bevvy of models and actors Pippa had bedded over the years. But maybe that was a good thing. And it wasn’t like she needed to marry for money; Pippa came from a legal dynasty. Ver de Veux & Partners was a magic circle firm that had been in her family for decades. Whenever she told anyone she’d gone to school with a Ver de Veux, they were impressed."

The writing doesn’t possess even an ounce of finesse. It’s boring, tepid, and uninspired. On top of that, for being a novel so intent on firing on all feminist cylinders, it uses Rose’s best friend Luce, who the novel reminds us of on every third page, is unfairly pretty, unbelievably gorgeous and a true men’s magnet, as nothing but a foil to help characterise Rose as the ugly duckling who never gets any recognition and who, with her limp hair, short stature, and whatever else she doesn’t like about her body, spends her time constantly comparing herself to her when they’re out together.

The novel isn’t clever enough to turn Rose’s feelings of inadequacy into a silent but knowing nod to the perfidiousness of patriarchy, but rather into a SCREAM and WHISTLE, banging you over the head with its “ to all female readers who ever felt jealous of another woman’s beauty: you’re not alone!! It’s the beauty industry’s, but mostly men’s, fault you are comparing yourself to other women in the first place!! ” message.

"Nonetheless, when a woman goes to a man’s home for the first time, there is always a slight sense of unease. No matter how attractive the man is, how safe he may make you feel, how polite he is to waiters, the unease is there. Spawning all kinds of anxieties and worst-case scenarios."

Finally, I hate the one-dimensional the novel takes on the interconnectedness of sex, gender, power, abuse, and who is usually believed and who isn’t.

In the middle of it all, Rose, through her work, befriends a social media influencer about her age. The model later confesses that it’s sooooo hard being an influencer, that there are hate forums entirely dedicated to her, that her relationship with her boyfriend is subjected to intense scrutiny, yada yada. Rose and readers are presented with a string of stuff on why she (and we) should feel sorry for this poor woman’s life being so extraordinarily hard. What rubs me the wrong way is how, yes, we are supposed to feel sorry for the model because boohoo, even rich women suffer from the patriarchal order, but the way her character is presented never once takes an intersectional approach.

That there’s a world of difference in how a rich, white woman and a poor, white woman are conceived and able to make their living in a patriarchal society is brushed aside. Not to mention the fact that race, bodily and mental health, ethnicity, or religion, as immensely important factors determining the social pecking order for women, are never once mentioned. Like yeah, she is a woman, so I can sympathise with her for being subject to misogyny like any other woman on this planet, but why the fuck I should feel sorry for a multi-millionaire is beyond me. For a novel so bent on showing the entertainment industry’s toxic side, it sure does a hell of a lot of nothing taking into account the possibilities available to über rich women in the industry compared to women working the low-level jobs.

There are more things I could mention, more stuff to list that annoyed me, but it’s nearing my bedtime, I still haven’t washed my face, and I want to start watching a new series. All in all, “Gold Rush” feels stale, it’s uninspired, it’s utterly forgettable, and its writing makes its subject matter come across as the timid voice of a dying person croaking their last hoorah.

Gold Rush is a memorable and important read although not always and easy to read book and I would advise checking the trigger warnings before picking this up. This follows our main character Rose as she meets famous musician Milo Jax and the consequences of their interactions and questions about consent and celebrity culture. Its a hard hitting book that portrays a wide range of emotions and consequences for Rose. A very interesting read that is powerful and thought-provoking. Definitely recommend picking up.

Reviewing this book is challenging. It’s not in any way an enjoyable read but it is a very important book.

The story focuses on Rose’s interactions with Milo Jax, a famous singer. What starts off as a friendly, flirty conversation on a red carpet becomes a lot more serious after the pair sleep together. Rose can’t remember anything about it, but worries something bad has happened. From then on, Rose descends into a destructive mindset as she grapples with the situation.

Despite the challenging content, I found Gold Rush to be a satisfying read. I desperately wanted Rose to choose other paths but it felt like a fairly true to life depiction of someone struggling. The pacing and style of writing was really great and the characters felt fully formed and real.

I’d recommend this book - and have done already.

This was a well written novel. early on in the story Rose is raped but she doesn’t remember it, nor can she bring herself to admit this to anyone. Her life seemingly falls apart around her after this night, and she struggles to admit it to herself. There’s several uncomfortable moments where she battles with her own anxiety and trauma, and I was desperately hoping someone would help her, or at least that she would help herself.This entire book was so difficult to read, but it was handled with care and brings to light such an important topic.

Wow, what a powerful and moving story. It was extremely well written for what Rose was going through, and how a lot of women are treated. It was shown with empathy and total compassion to those that have gone through similar situations, really touching on how it can make you feel. I absolutely adored Rose.

Thank you so much to the author, publisher and netgalley for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book a little confusing, muddled and slow in places. It does seem to need a rewrite. Sorry

Twenty-six year old Rose works in PR for a magazine, which amongst other things means she gets to attend A-list parties as part of her role. It's at one of these parties that she meets world-famous British singer Milo Jax. They flirt, and then a few days later spend an evening together. The morning after, Rose wakes up not fully sure of what happened, she just knows that it was something bad, and now she needs to put the pieces together.

This is a story about celebrity culture, consent, and a young woman in a job where it's more about who you know (and Rose is very much not connected). It's also about sexual politics and abusive relationships, and set in the summer of 2017 in London just before that famous hashtag that took over the world.

Reading this book felt raw and real, and would absolutely be triggering for some people, and food for thought for most. I really enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would given the emotive subject matter. I thought it was well-written and by someone who clearly knows her subject, and despite the uncomfortable topics covered, I found this compulsive reading and I really enjoyed it.

Gold Rush is a gorgeous book where I felt such sympathy for the protagonist it made my heart hurt a little. It reminded me a lot of Caroline O' Donoghue's Promising Young Woman, in that it's about a woman working in PR/marketing and navigating the sometimes toxic elements of this industry. I read it super quickly and my only criticism is that the ending felt very rushed. Also the last chapter switches narrators which really jarred me.

With thanks to NetGalley, 4th Estate and William Collins for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you for the advanced copy!
This was one of my most anticipated reads for this year and it didn’t disappoint - this is a great exploration of the darker side of fame and this was an extremely engaging a fast paced read. Olivia’s writing really gets you to feel the trauma that surfaces for Rose and how within celebrity culture, male figures are usually given a lot more protection than they deserve. This is a heavy read so definitely check trigger warnings first!

Smart and timely this is a book about a culture we survive every day. Smart, well written, stunningly devastating.

This is a very current read and deals with the whole celebrity culture topic. More and more we are hearing about how male celebrities / people in the public eye abuse their status in society and often in regards to women and consent.
Rose works in PR where she meets music sensation Milo Jax. After an event she heads home with him but wakes up not knowing what has happened and she is bleeding and in pain.
The novel is set in 2017 pre the #metoo movement and following the event we follow Rose through the stages of trying to figure out what happened, her mental state and how toxic the whole celebrity / influencer culture is .
A great read

A hard hitting read for sure. More so because it touches upon reality. Loved the underlying themes and how well written this is. Could never guess this was a debut from how well thought out and written this is.

It is a difficult read due to its theme but a must read. Some of the elements like putting celebrities on a pedestal and their image that we hold hits home. Especially the fan culture and social media. I think the use of some of these elements to weave the story is fantastic. The aftermath too is shown very well where you feel for the character.

Thank you NetGalley and 4th Estate and William Collins for this e-arc in exchange of my unbiased review.

@currentlyreading__
Book 53 of 2024

Thank you to @oliviapetter, @netgalley and the publisher @4thestatebooks for the e-copy of ‘Gold Rush’ in exchange for my thoughts.

A couple of years ago I read Petter’s work of non-fiction ‘Millennial Love’ which was certainly eye-opening but this was her debut fictional work.

We have our main character Rose who works for Firehouse, a powerful news outlet. Rose spends her days doing PR for glossy magazines. There are tedious spreadsheets, fashion divas, and many A-list parties. It’s at one of those parties where she meets Milo Jax, the world-famous, globally adored, British pop sensation. An unlikely flirtation turns into an even more unlikely evening and then Rose wakes up, unable to piece it all together. What happens next changes everything.

The writing is great really showcasing issues such as celebrity culture, consent and as it is set in 2017 it is prior to the MeToo movement so we see Rose’s experience from a different and rather isolating viewpoint. From the outset ‘Gold Rush’ seems like it will be a rather frivolous rom-com with an online flirtation with the global pop icon but when Rose wakes from a night with Milo and is covered with blood, the message of consent becomes writ large. This is not a rom-com; it is ultimately a powerful exploration of rape and its aftermath. It is impactful and a really important piece of fiction.

#bookworm #iamreading #bookreview #kindle #bookreviews #bibliophile #oliviapetter #bookreview #mustread #bookobsessed #goldrush #4thestatebooks #bookrecommendations #booksofinstagram #bookstagram #contemporaryfiction

Gold Rush by Olivia Petter

Rose Martin works as a publicist in the glitzy non-stop party world of celebrities and Instagram influencers, where she has the misfortune to meet up with the incredibly famous pop star Milo Jaxx.

She flirts with him, texts him and enjoys his attentions, surprised that he should have any interest in her and one thing leads to another. She goes to his place, gets very drunk. He takes her home and the next morning she remembers very little. It’s probably not an uncommon scenario.

However, afterwards nothing quite fits in its right place and things start to fall apart in work and with her friends. She has a panic attack, is endlessly distracted and seems unable to organise her life.

Then, for no particular reason, there is a long diversion into the depravity of a vulgar, sexualised, expensive hen party which Rose has somehow been invited to. There are male strippers, sex games and endless alcohol and it's fair to say that none of the rich, indulged, drug imbibing young women who attend it emerge from the experience looking good!

There's another diversion where Rose finds herself befriending, or befriended by, another young woman who is basically trapped as an influencer with millions of followers and zero privacy. It doesn't work out for her well either.

Rose spends little time working, a long time drunk, and almost as long sobbing in toilets. She has low self-esteem, thinks she's unattractive and is a loner with few friends. Maybe it's quite easy for Milo Jaxx!

It's hard to see what the point of this novel is. It’s not quite lifting the lid on what some people might see as a glamorous area of employment and it's not quite a warning to young girls to avoid friendly rock stars. It also describes the tart-like life of young wannabe it-girls, obsessed with gossip, cocaine and casual sex - but I'm not sure if the writer dislikes them. I certainly did!

In the end, it's a confused mix. Men only feature as sex objects doing a good line in woman hating and exploitation and, in many aspects, the women seem to match them - even down to the misogyny. It's not really a pleasant read either!

Sometimes with books of such a heavy subject matter it can be hard to slog through but I read Gold Rush in two sittings and absolutely loved it!

There is something so real and relatable in Petter’s writing (mostly the main character’s ANTM binge watching) that added a complexity to the difficult topics being raised.

So much to unpack now that I’ve finished it and this novel is one I will be thinking about for weeks to come!

Excited to see what comes next for Olivia Petter!

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for an ARC of Gold Rush.

Rose is a publicist, and has to deal with celebrities. However dealing with celebrities can go bad, and what happens then.

This book horrified me in a way that makes me think twice about idolising celebrities and influencers. Is what they're showing real life, probably not. Are they that nice in real life, probably not (who could be that nice all the time). Should we put these people on pedestals, probably not.

I liked seeing how this story would play out, it had me gripped very early on.
Good book, highly recommend