cover image Psychic Junkie: A Memoir

Psychic Junkie: A Memoir

Sarah Lassez, with Gian Sardar. . Simon Spotlight Entertainment, $14.95 (321pp) ISBN 978-1-4169-1838-7

This lively, tongue-in-cheek "addiction" memoir by an actress trying to make good in Hollywood quickly fizzles into a tedious diary of boyfriend angst. Lassez was declared by a trendy magazine as one of 12 "Actors to Watch" and yet one year later she's scraping by on welfare and with so few calls for work that her agent is hard-pressed to remember who she is. An introduction to a psychic proves to be the beginning of the end: Aurelia reads a star-studded destiny in the author's tarot cards. "Never had I so much faith in others' abilities to recognize my abilities," Lassez gushes. This morsel of hope prompts the author to rely increasingly on Aurelia's predictions about cleansing her aura and dating men fated for her. Still struggling with her career by age 30, she challenges Aurelia's rosy predictions and begins a disastrous dalliance with one phone psychic after another, who all assure her that the Knight of Wands is on his way into Lassez's life. In the end, heartbreak and poverty force her to recognize the folly of putting her life on hold for a man who might never come, and she emerges from this chirpy, can-do narrative as Mirabel the Psychic, who salves other people's heartaches. (July)