Amanda Wakes Up

By: Alisyn Camerota

Narrated by: Lu Hanessian, Alisyn Camerota

Length: 11 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

“Amanda Gallo is my kind of girl: funny, self-aware, and unable to resist a makeover.... I loved this novel.” (Lauren Weisberger, author of The Devil Wears Prada and When Life Gives You Lululemons)

“Entertaining.” (People)

When Amanda Gallo, fresh from the backwater of local TV, lands the anchor job of her dreams at FAIR News, she thinks she’s finally made it: a six-figure salary, wardrobe allowance, plenty of on-air face time, and a chance to realize her dreams, not to mention buy herself lunch. Instead, she finds her journalistic ideals shredded as she struggles to keep up with the issues in a ratings-crazed madhouse: battling for hair and makeup time; coping with her sexist (but scathingly handsome) coanchor, Rob; mixing up the headlines with pajama modeling on the street, and showing Benji Diggs, her media maestro boss, that she's got what it takes.

As the news heats up in a hotly contested election season and a wild-card candidate, former Hollywood actor Victor Fluke, appears on the scene, Amanda's pressure-cooker job gets hotter while her personal life unravels. Walking a knife's edge between ambition and survival, and about to break the biggest story of her career, Amanda must decide what she's willing to give up to get ahead - and what she needs to hold on to to save herself.

©2017 Alisyn Camerota (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Amanda Wakes Up uses a breezy story to provide an insider’s guide to a closed world.” (The New York Times)

“When Amanda Gallo signs on for the job of her dreams at FAIR news, she expects a life-changing career move. What she finds is chaos, vipers, and relentless competition. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry.” (Glamour)

“A hilarious, eye-opening glimpse into the TV-news trenches, from one who’s had to navigate them backwards and in heels.” (Samantha Bee, host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and author of I Know I Am, but What Are You?)

Fun read..enjoyed the parallels!

Easy read and fun. Nice first novel; I could see Amanda's character teaching additional higher moral compass lessons for more than the media.

Great book

Loooooved it, funny and clever!! Alisyn Camerota is such a great role model! I highly recommend it 😊

quite interesting was read with style. Would def

I would recommend the reading of this book, charming and funny at times well written.

Amazing parallels!

On its own the book was well written and helpful to understand the behind the scenes world and thought processes of journalists and the free press. I loved the comedic tones hit throughout as well as the realism of the love story that developed in the course of the book. That said, the book was infinitely more intriguing due to the amazing parallels to the 2016 election! Hoping Alisyn will consider a sequel so we can find out if Fluke ends up in the White House!

Amanda Wakes Up kept me glued to the speaker

Amanda Wakes Up keeps your attention. i listen in the car while driving and i found myself going on unnecessary drives just so i could hear more!!! #greatread #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

Entertaining

Narrator sounds like Camerota. Nice light hearted story of cable news. You can enjoy if you don’t take it as real life or biographical.

A peek into tv news - well I sure hope NOT!

I got this book on recommendation of a good friend. I enjoyed it but only to a certain point. I found the main characters somewhat entertaining, yet extremely shallow and self-centered. I have worked in radio off and on for 30+ years - in music, not news - and I have run into people like these, but they do not comprise the majority. I shudder to think that, as the author says in the note at the end, these are composites of those she has worked with in her broadcast news career.

The main character, Amanda Gallo, seems to have almost no power of self-reflection, lives entirely in the moment, and is throughout the book devoid of a personal moral code - willing to do almost anything in service to her dream of being an anchor on a major tv network. She's momentarily troubled by doing things against what she was taught in journalism school or what ideals she was raised with, even political views she's held her whole life, but a makeover, more money, beautiful clothing, seeing herself in a tv monitor, hobnobbing with the famous, etc. are all far more important to her than any of sense of personal honor. And she's also very concerned about her love life in a way that I find completely unreal for a female journalist who has worked her way up through the ranks to the New York market (probably the most difficult market to break into in the USA); she would have to be far more intelligent ( or, quite frankly and unfortunately, she'd have to be amazingly and unbelievably good-looking) than she is written here. I found the ending drama very unsatisfying; her principled on-air speech would have never have been permitted, and I find it a bit beyond the bounds of credulity that her best friend would behave in the way she does.

One theme running through the book that I very much appreciate, and that Amanda voices several times, is how her ideas change as she is confronted with her own biases. She meets people in the course of her job with whom she thought she had little in common, in fact had in the past dismissed as idiots, crackers, rednecks, etc., and she finds that they are people too, with legitimate concerns, ideas, and so on; they are no longer dismissable once she knows them personally. I think that's the best part of the book, and maybe the the best takeaway.

Four stars

Very interesting topic. You have to get to the end to judge how all of the parts fit together. It's light, lightly written, but does become a good illustration of what is going on today. The characters are slightly drawn, but their purpose is to show them, not so much as individuals, but as representatives of forces that push real people, and newsrooms, into the position they find themselves in.

It was difficult at times to tolerate the debates on the shows, as one who is SO sick of this on TV all the time. But if you can push through that, you can see the big picture the author is drawing. The book does not have any answers. Just a little insight and humor.

Amazing

This story is so close to being real that I was amazed! This is certainly a story I will listen to again and again through each election years.

Current Events

Funny and fast paced. Truly timely given today's news and events. Recommended for all going into the media business.