Alisyn Camerota

3.5

Quick easy novel about how it feels to be on morning TV covering a thinly veiled version of the 2016 Presidential election when you are a liberal reporter working on thinly veiled Fox News - and also throw in a touch of romance.

There are a handful of passages reminding the reader that looking outside the political bubbles we live in is important but mostly this is a completely predictable novel that entertained me but also failed to take me away from the hideous political world we live in right now and unfair as it may be, it lost points for that reason. It’s all just a little too close. Perhaps readers will enjoy this one a tiny bit more a few years from now when this story isn’t so current.




… (mehr)

In this novel by a television journalist who has cohosted morning shows on CNN and FOX, a frothy personal story of ambition and romance overlies a serious examination of journalistic ethics. After the main character, Amanda, scores a top job at a new network called FAIR, she begins to discover that motives for presenting both sides of a story may not be as neutral as they seem—especially when proponents on one side are being disingenuous. The story takes place during a fictional campaign season, with political newcomer Victor Fluke facing off against veteran politician Virginia Wynn. These characters seem like obvious stand-ins for Trump and Clinton, but astonishingly, Camerota wrote the story before the 2016 election.… (mehr)

Since so many of us have been consumed watching cable news since the election of 2016, the timing of CNN morning show New Day anchor Alisyn Camerota’s debut novel about a young cable news reporter “Amanda Wakes Up” is fortunate.

Camerota has worked for many news organizations- Fox, CNN, ABC, MSNBC- and she gives the reader an insider’s look at what that is like. Amanda Gallo works for a small local NYC TV news station when she finds herself the only reporter on scene at a bank robbery in progress.

Her reporting lands her a job as a morning anchor at FAIR News, a new cable news network trying to make a big splash in a crowded space. Her boss wants to score huge ratings, her male cohost is a sexist blowhard, her liberal boyfriend is unhappy that she works for a company pushing a conservative agenda, and her best friend is a producer at a competing news organization who believes in anything for a story.

Camerota wrote “Amanda Wakes Up” following the 2012 election, but so many of the things that happen in the story are eerily prescient to the 2016 election. She sheds a compassionate light on people on both side of the issues, something that many people in the media have been unable to accomplish. If you are a cable news junkie, this one is for you, although I found the ending a little too pat.… (mehr)