A witty debut that puts an entertaining reality TV spin on a perennial topic: mother-daughter dysfunction.” —People
“The leading ladies here are the stuff of reality-show legend, but Widger’s supporting cast are the ones who are impossible not to watch. One couple blunders through infertility; the other grapples with authenticity and aging. We were pulling for the whole gang — and loved the surprise twists at the end.”—Glamour
“This entertaining debut novel unsparingly takes on damaged family ecosystems and the show-business machine. Widger has created a delicate suspension bridge out of her characters’ relationships to one another and the world, and throughout the course of the novel, she steadily, craftily adds weight, making for compulsive reading.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Real Happy Family, Caeli Wolfson Widger’s debut novel, is an authentic story about the artifice of reality television and America’s obsession with it. It’s no small order to find depth in a genre synonymous with vapid depravity, but Widger does — not in the shows themselves, but in the complicated dynamics of a family willing to put their dysfunction on display… Set primarily in Los Angeles, the novel resembles the city itself, where a superficial veneer belies a more complicated truth… Widger’s prose really moves; it’s as if she has her foot on the accelerator the entire time. The novel’s shifting perspective is most fun when Lorelei is at the wheel — reading her is like partying with a speed freak without the awful comedown.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“Widger skewers Hollywood fame hunters in her sharply funny debut...a thoroughly enjoyable read.” —Booklist
“Real Happy Family is a cautionary tale about conscienceless reality TV producers, the desperate people who believe reality TV can kickstart a “Hollywood” career, and the lengths that these people will go to “make it,” even at the expense of family, health, and morals.” —Sarah’s Bookshelves
“I loved that this wasn’t a fluffy-take on reality TV or a profile of a “struggling” actress. It feels real and borderline scandalous in a man-behind-the-curtain way, without being sensationalized with the glitz and glamour of typical celeb-fiction reads. To top it all off, it’s smart and witty, in all of the right places.” —BellingFam
“Real Happy Family is a book about Hollywood, but its look at the plight of the “might-have-beens” is a refreshing change of pace from the lifestyles of the rich and famous tomes that dominate the genre. As it turns out, you can be a hot mess without fame and fortune.” —Words for Worms
“Cinematic in its rendering, Real Happy Family glides effortlessly between the lives of characters living the underbelly and upper crust of the Hollywood dream, and the bottom dwellers who feed off the fallout. With the precision of an expert director, Widger leads the reader gawking and cringing past the train wrecks of Colleen and Lorelei, but exposes their hearts, and somehow leaves you cheering for a real happy ending for them all.” —Chandra Hoffman, author of Chosen
“Reminiscent of The Corrections, Caeli Wolfson Widger’s Real Happy Family is everything you hope for from a first novel but rarely find: a must-keep-reading-even-though-it’s-2 am-plot packed with turbo-flawed yet loveable characters, all capped off with electric prose. I could not put it down. Had me hooked from page one. Bound to be read and talked about from coast to coast. I feel lucky to have been in on the secret before the rest of the country discovers Widger’s smart and funny debut.” —Deirdre Shaw, author of Love or Something Like It
“Real Happy Family is the twenty-first century version of Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust, a report in 2013 on what has happened to West’s Hollywood—and America—during the last seventy-five years. Like West’s book, it is both an anatomy of the times and a prophecy of our continuing confusion.” —Jay Martin, author of Nathanael West: The Art of His Life
