Pretty Mess
Written by Erika Jayne
Narrated by Erika Jayne
4/5
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About this audiobook
Without her alter-ego Erika Jayne, Erika Girardi says she’d just be “another rich bitch with a plane”—so get ready for the dishy, tell-all memoir from show-stopping performer, model, singer, and beloved star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Erika Jayne.
Erika Jayne didn’t make it this far by holding back. Now, in her first-ever memoir, the fan favorite star of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills bares her heart, mind, and soul.
In Pretty Mess, Erika spills on every aspect of her life: from her rise to fame as a daring and fiery pop/dance performer and singer; to her decision to accept a role on reality television; to the ups and downs of family life (including her marriage to famed lawyer Tom Girardi, thirty-three years her senior). There’s much more to Erika Jayne than fans see on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Pretty Mess is her opportunity to dig deep and tell her many-layered, unique, and inspiring life story.
As fun and fearless as its author, this fascinating memoir proves once and for all why Erika Jayne is so beloved: she’s strong, confident, genuine, and here to tell all!
Editor's Note
No holds barred …
This memoir is a no-brainer for fans of the show and especially for fans of Erika Girardi — as well as of her singing/dancing alter-ego, Erika Jayne.
Erika Jayne
Erika Jayne is a pop/dance performer and singer, model, and star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. She lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and son.
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Reviews for Pretty Mess
135 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love that Erika was the narrator!!!!!!!!!! Nicely written story.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Oh my God, these reviews make no sense. I get the feeling all the good reviews are coming from her blindly obsessed fans, because there is no way on earth anyone actually thought this was a good book. No offense to the ghost writer either, because you can only work with what a person gives you, and I know he is a pun excellent writer. But she won’t talk about anything of interest. She’s real into some stupid high school play she was in, however, and seems to harbor deep would a from not getting the lead, or some such stupidity. We want to know about the husband, why you let your mother, who you seem furious with, raise your son so you could follow your dream or whatever. She never elaborates on what her mother did specifically that put a bee in her bonnet, but, in short, I fell asleep to this book, literally. I can’t sleep in a bed a night, nor on an airplane, nor anywhere, really, but I fell asleep to this thing, and more than once.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book, I love the audio in her voice! She shares a bunch of personal stories which helped me feel close to her. This is a must read for fans who feel they don’t really know her due to the guard she puts up. It explains a lot.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A lot of fluff but short on substance. Mildly entertaining; kind of like the audio version of Driving Miss Daisy.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Insightful to her outward demeanor and exterior.
Interesting bio on an over the top famous character but, a down-home, genuine lady!1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Book definitely hasn’t aged well in light of recent legal issues Erika is facing…
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Disappointing. Erica comes across as very hard and more focused on her image than anything else.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Told one percent of her life - write a book just to sell a book maybe
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Was as expected. Main complaint was each chapter was written independently and then arranged out of order so the flow was off. Interesting perspective. Nice to hear more about her life than just the Housewives.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Please... She knew the entire time. She just didn't care.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If you’re a fan of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, you know that this season is getting goooooood. Erika Jayne’s (aka Erika Girardi) husband, high-powered attorney Tom Girardi, has been accused of funneling over 20 million dollars of his clients’ settlements into Erika’s LLC, EJ Global. This is money that was supposed to go to the victims of a plane crash, including widows and orphans. Not good. The big question is…Did Erika know where the money in her LLC was coming from? The season started filming right before the story broke and more information comes to light every week. Bravo couldn’t have asked for more drama! If you’re not a fan of the show, you can watch the documentary The Housewife and the Hustler on Hulu if you want to get up to speed quickly.Anyway, Pretty Mess came out in 2018 so there is no mention of any of that. However, I read it to see if there were any clues that Erika might have been in on Tom’s schemes. And the answer is, not really. However, Erika Jayne was never signed by a record label – she’s entirely self-funded and it doesn’t sound like she makes that much money performing. I would venture to say that she probably loses money because she is spending a boatload on costumes, and glam, travel and making music videos for her songs. Also, who knows how much she pays Mikey, her right-hand man and creative director. I’m sure he doesn’t come cheap.Sadly, there is only one chapter about her experience on RHOBH and its light on details. She goes into a lot more detail about her time on Dancing with the Stars. I did enjoy reading about her pre-Housewives life though. I didn’t know much about her because she rarely talks about her past on the show. She opens up quite a bit about her relationship with her parents and grandmother. Fun fact: It was ghost-written by Brian Moylan, who wrote The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives that I reviewed a few weeks ago.Pretty Mess was a quick, fun read that fans of RHOBH will enjoy. I checked it out from the library because I felt weird about giving her money while she’s in the midst of this legal scandal. If you’ve been following it, let me know what you think…Did Erika know??
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5While the first half of the book circles around the author's adolescence, youth, growing up, and becoming herself, the second part lets this book down severely. Even though this book is written much in the same short and no-nonsense manner in which the author speaks on "Real Housewives", and there are a few real gems to be found here - notably on her relationship with her mother, and how her world turned once she became famous - there's a lot of filler here, e.g. far too many pages of faff from "Dancing With The Stars", which sums up what a far leap she is from common life. She even defines her own "me too", which has nothing to do with what you probably think it means. She gives no rich-person excuses for her lifestyle, while offering no true insight into it, which simultaneously lends a veneer to the book as a whole; I was hoping for more internal insights from this place, but got more pages of the times spent Erika gets flown in her Gulfstream private jet plane. All in all, if you chuck the book after the first 60%, I'll say the experience is probably the better for it.