Diary of a South Beach Party Girl
by Gwen Cooper
Published by Simon Spotlight Entertainment
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Reviewed by Edith Knehans
The flash and glamour of South Beach is renowned the world over. Known for the “Beautiful People,” the South Beach of the nineties epitomized the penultimate party lifestyle, a way of life that is in reality no more than a flash-in-a-pan. Reputations, fortunes, and fashions are made and broken at stellar speed, crashing as fast as they are created. Living life in the fast lane, celebrities, drag queens, drug dealers, models, mobsters and local cruisers partied hard and without abandon.
Diary of a South Beach Party Girl leads the reader on a wild ride of historical social proportions, seducing the reader into the fantasy lifestyle led by Rachel Baum and her cohorts. Cooper is a fourth-generation Miami Beach native. She moved to South Beach in 1997 to chase a more spectacular lifestyle and rose to South Beach celebrity status at the speed of light. The story parallels Cooper’s “career girl by day, party girl by night” lifestyle. The story’s lead, Rachel Baum, recounts the experiences living the life of excess and depravity within a social structure that embraces the popular and banishes the socially exiled.
Written with humor and angst, Cooper captures the idiosyncratic spirit and distinctive culture of South Beach in the glossiest years in the town’s history. Class and social position dictate the protocol of social activity. Though all walks of life are exposed in Diary, the most explored relationships are those that Rachel and her closest friends maintain. Rachel is the straight foil to her gay friends, winning allegiance from the gay community to the darker relationships Rachel develops along the way.
The pace of the story is non-stop and filled with accounts of a fantasy lifestyle and the not-so fantastic consequences of excessive living.
Armchair Interviews says: A great summertime read!