Nothing about this book makes sense, so it's difficult to write a review in the traditional sense. I will try to summarise the story such as it is, before this descends into a list of things that Tyra Banks made me read, and which I couldn't pass by without repeating in disbelief.

Basically this book is what happens if you turn ANTM into a really bad fantasy novel. Especially if you happen to be narcissistic lunatic Tyra Banks.

Protagonist Tookie De La Crème is exactly the kind of Mary Sue cipher you would expect from the self-mythologising, pathologically self-obsessed Banks, possessing all the supposed physical flaws with which Banks is obsessed in herself (big forehead, gangly limbs, difficult hair etc.) She is also a faux-unassuming “Forgetta-Girl” with "multiple-personality hair" who speaks ALL world languages and attracts the attention and admiration of pretty much every character.
She lives in some sort of hellscape where everyone looks like a model, and the majority of people work on "inhumane fashion- or beauty-factory assembly lines", unless they're some type of Oliver Twist factory orphan. The whole thing seems to be ruled over by a giant talking mountain with the Eye of Sauron looming over it, which is where Modelland is located.

Tookie is a downtrodden Cinderella character, living a life of tragedy. For example she has a self-harming homeless best friend who is being chased by mysterious forces and possibly being experimented on at a bizarre asylum, but has time to chat with Tookie about her crush. The main impact of this situation is that Tookie is upset by it. The De La Crème parents meanwhile are cruel circus grotesques, a dipsomaniac ex-acrobat with a glass eye and some sort of hideous wrinklebeast who has a doll she treats as a baby. Plus there’s the sister, who is apparently too stupid to say "ta-dah" correctly, suffers from choreomania and is creepily sexualised for a 13-year-old. Everything is pain and suffering for poor unloved Tookie. Until, in a completely unexpected turn of events, it turns out that she is the chosen one and she is whisked away.

After a psychedelic Yellow Submarine journey through a variety of nonsense Tookie ends up in Modelland, a sort of model Hogwarts where nothing makes sense and they steal your youth or something? Here people shoot clothes out of their hands, speak in pretentious Franglais, and are often part animal.

What follows is a series of random madness over far too many pages: zipper rooms, nightgowns with capes, magical personal lighting, cat people and lessons in not sharing. As well as several random interpolations from a narrator who keeps calling me dahling, and who rarely makes any sense.

Some of the things the reader has to suffer are:

Places:
PitterPatter
Diabolical Divide
Bangle, Bauble, and Bead Institute—B3, aka Bile, Barf, Belches, and Butt Bombs - B4? (Why not B5?
Shivera
SansColor
Metopia
Peppertown
LaDorno
The Melancholia Ward
Perfecta-Fecta (A department store)
Terra BossaNova
Striptown
Taj Gardens in Chakra
Obscure Obelisks
Platinum Row
Bou-Big-Tique Nation (A country which is also a department store?)
Beautification Boulevard
NorDenSwee - Scandinavia, I guess
Cappuccina - Italy?
Chakra - I think India

Overall, this was disappointing. TBF, I didn't really know anything about Emily Maitliss before reading this, but I guess I assumed that since she's a journalist covering stories of national and international interest and extremely serious cases this book would be analytical and informative.

I was wrong.

Instead it touches very lightly on a number of high-profile interviews and TV spots Maitliss has been involved in. Many powerful men have their words repeated by her without any response or rebuttal, whilst she breathlessly fangirls about their charisma. Many minor criticisms of Maitliss' reporting technique are dismissed, to the background of horrific tragedies which are mainly barely commented on. Many very boring texts and tweets are repeated verbatim, to no obvious end.

Not only is this book dull, but on occasion the lack of contrasting viewpoints and complete absence of even a hint of debate is ignorant, and even downright dangerous. Most egregious is possibly the section when Maitliss draws comparison between Rachel Dolezal's actions and the experience of transgender people. At one point she even includes a tweet from an anti-transgender troll, which she apparently takes at face value. Then having skipped lightly over this painful and difficult issue she moves on, without offering any hint of the opposing view. Or indeed any indications that she understands the issue at all. Similarly contentious is the section when she jumps from covering the horrific experiences of migrants crossing Europe to effectively blaming them for Brexit. At best, clumsy. At worst, inflammatory. A nadir is reached when Maitliss manages to fawn over Prince Andrew even whilst questioning him on his membership of a paedophile ring. Truly horrifying stuff.

A significant amount of the book is just fluff - asking Simon Cowell about his ex-girlfriends or Jon Stewart about his father issues. A fair amount of it is self congratulation for the amazing value and impact of her interviews. And some of it is personally offensive to me - discussing what good friends she is with Piers Morgan, or inexplicably describing Jeremy Clarkson as "profoundly anti-establishment".

I was hoping for light essays with a sociopolitical angle, informed by the many years an intelligent woman has spent at the heart of news journalism. What I got was a somewhat self-serving memoir by a woman living in a comfortable upper-middle-class media bubble who is unaware of the extent to which she neglects to question the establishment. At times I was almost embarrassed for her, as she basically giggles and twirls her hair whilst interviewing Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart, or concludes a section on Grenfell by discussing how hard television journalism is. But more often I felt let down by her - an intelligent, educated woman in a position of power who seems to be wasting chance after chance to make a difference.