Hollywood, Ending

Juniper Castillo was a Nickelodeon star, a child actor who now, at age twenty-two, is looking to distance herself from being known only for her previous work. As she puts it, "I was looking to do my job well enough that I became undeniable, that I ceased to be, as the phrase turns, a former child star and became something else." She is cast in a small indie movie called Andy Warhol Never Gets Old. It's headlined by a major Hollywood actor, Matthew Malone—"Avenger, action star, popcorn actor extraordinaire"—but Juniper is cast opposite a green, as-yet-unknown actor named Kai Laramie, and their romance in the movie is what will carry the film.

When Juniper first meets Kai, she is struck by his aura. "He looked—I don't know how else to say it—like a movie star...Plenty of people are attractive. Precious few are genuinely magnetic. I wanted to buy stock in him immediately, even having never seen his acting." The two become fast friends, and they become each other's safe harbor during an emotional shoot, while Matthew Malone provides mentorship and paternalistic advice to navigating the release of a movie that starts to get serious buzz.

Both Juniper and Kai also have their own demons that they're working through. Juniper had an overbearing mother who shepherded her through Juniper's childhood career, before eventually betraying her trust. Kai has an incident from high school that he has kept fiercely under wraps, and with his burgeoning fame, he's worried both that it will become public and also that it will destroy the friendship that he and Juniper have developed.

John Green made a name for himself writing YA literature (most notably The Fault in Our Stars) before surprising many with his flexibility when he published 2025's well-regarded non-fiction book Everything is Tuberculosis. While Hollywood, Ending is ostensibly his first foray into adult literature, it reads as borderline-YA, with some themes that are a bit more mature.

The book is part romance and part rebuke of the entertainment industry, specifically the business side of an industry that prides itself on the authenticity of the art created within it. It was reminiscent in many ways of Into the Blue, although I preferred the love story in that book to this one. It also reminded me of some Hollywood memoirs from actors who were stars as children, most notably Jeannette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Died (my #14 of 2022) and, to a lesser extent, Christina Applegate's You With the Sad Eyes from earlier this year.

I liked it, but given the buzz, I was also hopeful for something more. It's a perfectly fine story, but the love story lags behind more traditional romance novels (or Into the Blue), and the send-up of Hollywood has been better chronicled in the memoirs mentioned. Satisfying but unremarkable.