Author: Dolly Madison
Genre: Memoir
Format: Hardcover
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A former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner describes how her years inside the Playboy Mansion went from a fairy tale of A-list celebrity parties to an oppressive regime of strict rules, scheduled sex, and a total loss of identity, so much so that she even contemplated suicide.
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I picked this book up because I knew nothing about Playboy, the magazine or the house. And since I never plan to be personally acquainted with Playboy, I hoped Holly Madison would be my behind-the-scenes sneak peak. That is what you get: a sometimes dry but very informative sneak peak.
Holly shows the reader what it actually felt like to live in the Playboy Mansion: the strict rules, the fighting between girlfriends (that Hefner often fueled), the constant partying, the drugs, the bedroom routine. This book truly is a behind the scenes look at mansion life. It seemed as if Holly went out of her way to be honest about the goings on of the mansion, even when it made her look bad. I really respect her honesty. My one criticism is that she sometimes made herself look like a naive, innocent child and constant victim of the "mean girls" who had no way out of the lifestyle rather than a full-grown woman making a decision that kept her in a constant state of unhappiness.
About Hef. He is a creepy, manipulative, old dude who likes to have sex with young women. Why? Because it makes him feel powerful. Because it seems that he wasn't in it because he enjoyed the sex. There were a few occasions where Holly said that when he didn't get his way, he would burst into tears, mind you, he was like 80 years old at the time. There was once when Kendra explained a time when he purposely tried to start a fight between his girlfriends because "he likes the drama."
Holly's story does not end with her getting out of the mansion. She talks about how she adjusted, relationships after Hef, and figuring our her career. This part of her story, getting out and adjusting, I found just as interesting as the time she spent in the Mansion.
Down the Rabbit Hole isn't always always entertaining; there was never a point where I felt like I couldn't put the book down. It's good for the information, not the entertainment. It wasn't fun and grabbing like a reality television show. Sometimes I got bored but keep pushing on for sheer curiosity's sake. That was my main struggle with this book: it could be dry sometimes.
Holly is honest about her mistakes, she does try to justify them a little but don't we all?
4 stars for the content.
3 stars for how it was delivered.
