I love to read books that initially come across as light material, a summer read so to speak, but by the end I find it has changed my way of looking at the world. Between You and Me starts off as a look at the excesses of being a young, mega-successful pop star and slowly turns around to a deeply moving statement about the unquenchable thirst the public has for celebrity, and cost in real lives that has. You will not look at the tabloids quite the same way again after this book.

Much like reading Curtis Sittenfeld American Wife and thinking Laura Bush the whole time, if you are like me you will not be able to separate the pop star of this book from Britney Spears. It is the story of a young girl thrust into stardom with her controlling parents, to begin a journey on a runaway train called fame. It doesn’t matter how much you wish for normality the minute you step off it seems that ride will be gone forever. So you keep on to keep on until ultimately something just breaks inside of you.

It is easy to sit back and watch the TMZ style news and pass judgment on the celebrities, thinking to ourselves “Well I would be different if I was famous.” But we are not famous and we can not imagine what that pressure and loss of privacy is like. I kept coming back to Craig Ferguson’s impassioned monologue at the height of the Britney meltdown. The notion it doesn’t make us good people to attack the vulnerable.

They say if you truly want to understand another person you should walk in their shoes a little while. Between You and Me allows you do that, at least for a little while, for the young and famous. One of my favorite quotes is from a Henry B. Eyring speech, “When you meet someone, treat them as if they were in serious trouble, and you will be right more than half the time.” We should not be so quick to judge others, especially people we know nothing of substance about.