Sizzle Reel by Carlyn Greenwald
CW: Drinking, Heavy Drinking, Swearing, Described Sexual Content, Forced Closet-ing, Forced Outing, Toxic Work Environment, Queerphobia, Anxiety, Described Panic Attack, Money Problems, Unemployment and Firing, Queerphobic Microaggressions, Ethnic Microaggressions, Vomit, Dubious Consent, Dysfunctional Family Dynamics, Antisemitism, Deadnaming, Gaslighting
4.5/5
I'd like to start off this review by talking about the cover on Carlyn Greenwald's Sizzle Reel. It's the reason I decided to read it. I knew it was queer and potentially forgot that it was Jewish, but that cover was in my mind for months as I waited for the audiobook on Libby. Created by Madeline Partner and Maria Nguyen, the cover features a gorgeous red-head standing in the front with two attractive love interests off to the side. One love interest is giving off Kristen Stewart vibes. It's all bathed in pastel pink and orange, adding the beauty of a sunset to it. The typography is having a little bit of fun without taking away from the rest of the cover. It's a queer paradise and I'd love to see more covers like this.
Here's a blurb about Sizzle Reel, assuming that you need more than a cover to judge a book. For two years, Luna Roth has been suffering through an abusive Hollywood job that isn't even in her field of cinematography. When she meets Valeria, rising star and potential member of the queer community, everything starts to change. Luna has only just come out as bi at 24 and feels she needs to "catch up" on experiences. Her friends work to hook them up, whether it is professionally or intimately. While Luna is facing her job changes, newly-public identity, anxiety, and family problems, her best friend Romy has been acting strange. Will Luna be able to keep her life from falling apart while everything around her changes?
One thing that stood out to me in Sizzle Reel was how the choice of first person POV affected the tone of the book. Although Luna never directly says she has an audience, she knows how to interact with one. She's quite expressive and is honest enough with us that we can see past what she's hiding from herself. Most of the time with first person, that character either breaks the fourth wall or is only going along with I/me pronouns because the author made them do it. Luna being between these options makes for a great narrative and is absolutely in character. She's a cinematographer who's written by a member of the film industry. Essentially, this book has a complete aesthetic you're likely to get hooked on. Greenwald originally wrote Sizzle Reel to be a script, and while it was translated to a novel beautifully, that intention still shows.
Sizzle Reel is about things not being what we expect them to be. This goes for both the audience and the characters. I technically guessed the ending, but I kept changing my mind about it. I worried for nothing that things would pan out unrealistically or that I'd hate the outcome. Luna is trying to figure how to live in the queer community now that she's out. She's only getting advice from one biased queer person and it isn't helping her anxiety. She's receiving a lot of overwhelming input about what she should be doing. This goes beyond just being about her bisexuality. I have a feeling Greenwald was writing to an audience that already knows what anxiety is like. I could relate to Luna's thoughts without them needing to be explained to me. She just wanted to do the right or perfect things, hopefully the easy things. It all made her more confused, doing things the harder way, and unable to easily explain herself to others. My empathy for Luna made some parts of the book hard to get through, but witnessing how everything comes together made it worth it.
I mentioned earlier that I potentially forgot this was a piece of Jewish literature. I don't remember how I discovered this book, if I knew it was Jewish at the time I decided to eventually read it. Either way, it came as a pleasant surprise for me when I began reading. Luna and her best friend, Wyatt, are both Jewish. Luna and I both focus more on the cultural aspects of being Jewish, but she still had a different perspective than I've had. I love reading a variety of Jewish literature because it lets me see my community from different eyes. If you're looking for a Jewish queer 20-something as a main character, definitely try out Sizzle Reel.
This story touches on several timely queer topics and misses out on one I wish it would have addressed. Luna's arc is mostly about the queer panic I've mentioned previously, figuring out how to engage in the community and learning to prioritize herself. Valeria's arc is about being forced back into the closet by Hollywood, a place that the average right-winger assumes is leftist. Luna faces some of this toxicity herself. Romy's arc is about being out to her extended family as non-binary when she's still figuring out her relationship with gender. Unfortunately, despite Luna being extremely demi-coded (likely unconsciously), the asexual spectrum isn't directly brought up in Sizzle Reel. I believe if someone had suggested demisexuality to Luna, she would have had some of her anxieties lifted. Overall, I loved the amount of queer rep and topics Greenwald covered. It was all appropriately wrapped up with the last words in the book, "queer bliss".
Carlyn Greenwald's Sizzle Reel is a great book to read if you're looking for a slightly unpredictable Jewish queer romcom that uses Hollywood/Pasadena/LA as its background. Considering that's too niche to be likely, hopefully I've painted a tempting picture of the novel for you. Love triangles, urban exploration, and info dumps about the film industry await you. So, ready, set, action!
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