Thank you SimonBooks, #partner, for the finished copy of A Good Bad Boy in exchange for my honest review. I purchased the audiobook for my collection.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster / Simon & Schuster Audio
Published: March 5, 2024
Summary:
An artful and contemplative tribute to the late actor famed for his role as Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills, 90210 .
Best known for playing loner rebel Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills 90210 , Luke Perry was fifty-two years old when he died of a stroke in 2019. There have been other deaths of 90’s stars, but this one hit different. Gen X was reminded of their own inescapable mortality, and robbed of an exciting career resurgence for one of their most cherished icons—with recent roles in the hit series Riverdale and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood bringing him renewed attention and acclaim. Only upon his death, as stories poured out online about his authenticity and kindness, did it become clear how little was known about the exceedingly humble actor and how deeply he impacted popular culture.
In A Good Bad Boy , Margaret Wappler attempts to understand who Perry was and why he was unique among his Hollywood peers. To do so, she uses an inventive hybrid narrative. She speaks with dozens who knew Perry personally and professionally. They share insightful how he kept connected to his Ohio upbringing; nearly blew his 90210 audition; tried to shed his heartthrob image by joining the HBO prison drama Oz ; and in the last year of his life, sought to set up two of his newly divorced friends. (After his death, the pair bonded in their grief and eventually married.) Amid these original interviews and exhaustive archival research, Wappler weaves poignant vignettes of memoir in which she serves as an avatar to show how Perry shaped a generation’s views on masculinity, privilege and the ideal of “cool.”
Timed to the fifth anniversary of Perry’s death, A Good Bad Boy is a profound and entertaining examination of what it means to be an artist and an adult.
My thoughts:
I was a HUGE fan of 90210 and I was #TeamDylan all the way! Perhaps because I had a crush on the original bad-boy James Dean, I found Dylan McKay to be one of my favorite characters on 90210 and I just loved the way Luke Perry portrayed him. I was so saddened by his death and loved getting to know more about him through this book.
I loved hearing what a good person Luke was…that made my heart so happy because all too often we hear how so many of our favorite actors or actresses just aren’t nice people. Luckily Luke didn’t seem to fall into that category.
I also loved how this book was set up, a biography of sorts about Luke paired with a memoir of the author’s life growing up in the time of 90210. It wasn’t the story I was expecting when I requested the book, but I enjoyed it all the same.
Audio thoughts:
I listened to this one, but was glad to have the print copy on hand as it does jump around a bit and I did find myself flipping back a few times to check some things. But that might have been a me thing. The narrators made it quite easy to tell which part you were in – George Newbern did all of the biography parts and Jennifer Jill Araya did all the memoir parts.
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