For all of us outside the sphere of the Hollywood elite, our closest glance at life along the West Coast lies within the pages of supermarket tabloids and the quick fingers of blogger Perez Hilton.

Award shows and red carpets are images flashed across our television screens once each season, simply there to remind us that these beautiful people possess the lives that we do not.

For Lola Santisi, however, premieres and paparazzi are part of a world she knows all too well.

Lola is the main character in Celebutantes, the first novel written by two of Hollywood's elite pedigree, Amanda Goldberg, daughter of film producer Leonard Goldberg, and Ruthanna Hopper, daughter of acclaimed actor Dennis Hopper.

The book is an insider's "fictitious" glimpse into the insanity and chaos that is Oscar week. Based closely on the authors' lives, the novel is jam-packed with demanding starlets, fame-starved assistants and a hundred or so name-dropped celebrities.

In short, this book reveals nothing new, but instead simply resembles a lengthy issue of US Weekly or an hour-long episode of E! News.

As part of a generation raised on celebrity gossip and pop icons, Lola Santisi is a character I am sure many women have dreamed of playing more than once in their lifetimes.

A young attractive Hollywood starlet weaned on her father's money and her mother's good looks, Lola has never had a care in the world. A constant fixture at the hottest clubs and restaurants in town, her latest gig on the social scene consists of persuading her social group of Hollywood's hottest "it" girls to wear her best friend's designer gowns to the Oscars.

Sounds exciting, right? Not exactly. For Lola, Oscar week is a downward spiral of never-ending disasters and semi-hilarious mishaps. Authors Goldberg and Hopper don't seem to fare so well either. Their first crack at a comical, modern look into young Hollywood falls disastrously short of expectation.

The novel drags from one fashion disaster to the next, leading Lola across a montage of all-too-familiar scenarios.

From the starving actress to the womanizing male icon, the only entertaining aspect of the novel is attempting to guess which celebrity horror stories are fact and which are actually fiction.

Ultimately, this story is as predictable as any other novel set inside the world of socialites, and slightly more boring. Celebutantes lacks a fresh take on an old tale and provides no incentive to keep readers interested.

Although this could be a choice for a fast beach read, the characters and their scandalous tales will just as quickly be forgotten.

Grade: C-