90210½

Author(s): Jay Sanga

Location(s): Hollywood

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Contemporary

Karly Cadieux is a teenage actress at the center of a hit television series. She lives a life of absurd luxury. Her shoes cost more than your car. Her car costs more than your apartment. When she takes a nap, she wakes up with a thousand more Instagram followers.

From the outside, it looks like the Hollywood dream. But in reality, Karly’s life functions as total submission to an industry built on image and narcissism.

Behind closed doors, her career is negotiated in meetings she isn’t always invited to. Her friendships come with unspoken conditions. Her romantic life is quietly adjusted to suit press cycles and branding strategies.

The more clearly Karly begins to see the machinery exploiting her, the more efficiently she learns to exploit herself.

Written with biting satire and psychological realism, 90210½ exposes the social economy of teenage celebrity — where intimacy is transactional, authenticity is a liability, and growing up means learning not how to find yourself, but how to sell yourself.

Glamorous, unsettling, and darkly funny, 90210½ is a literary portrait of fame, power, and adolescence under late-stage capitalism.

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