Market Street Cinema - Michele Machado

Market Street Cinema
Michele Machado 

It took only six weeks for Lita to realize she had neither the fortitude nor discipline to get through college, and a single day for her parents to issue an ultimatum...

She either gets a formal education, or she gets out and starts her life.

Forced onto a fast-track to independence, Lita soon finds that her minimum wage job isn't enough to live on. With few options and a mounting pile of responsibilities, she begins work as an exotic dancer at San Francisco's Market Street Cinema.

Will her time in the gritty underworld of adult entertainment put her on the path that secures her future—or will it swallow her up and destroy everything she never knew she wanted?

Please Pass The Books Review:

Classified as new adult, I initially mistook Market Street Cinema as erotica and very nearly passed on it. While it deals with adult situations and definitely contains highly adult content, it is not page after page of gratuitous sex. What is shown to the reader is a no-holds barred peek into the life of a young, casual sex worker (not a prostitute, but a true to life stripper). She comes in the form of 19-year old Lita, who has just been pushed from the family nest after being given an ultimatum from her parents.

Instead of taking the safe collegiate path, Lita decides to figure out what she wants to do on her own and opts instead to work full time. It doesn't take long before she realizes how hard (and expensive) it is to live on your own, and after a handful of chance manifestations, she begins working at San Francisco's Market Street Cinema.

All this is set in the late 90's (1998, to be exact), so it was fun to step back to a time where landlines and payphones were still used, the internet was in its infancy, Allie McBeal was on TV, Blondie's Pizza was a San Francisco staple, and the Market Street Cinema was actually open (it closed in 2013, but the late 90's was considered its heyday).

Something that made this book a stand-out to me was that there was no love interest. Lots of men who pay money to see T&A, but not a boyfriend. Finally we have a story where a man doesn't swoop in, steal our heroine's heart, and save the day. Instead, we have a girl who comes of age and saves her own damn self—aided in part by an aging, big-sister role model of a stripper (aging only by adult entertainment standards, not real-world standards).

Market Street Cinema is a tight, well written story. There is a tragic twist that, frankly, will make every reader's heart break, adding real depth and authenticity to Lita's fate. This book is absolutely worth reading and I highly recommend it.

FIVE STARS

I received an ARC from Mint Minx Press in exchange for my honest opinion, which this is.

Michele Machado is a San Francisco born literary pundit with a significant ramen addiction. When not writing review articles or shoveling Japanese noodles down her throat, she enjoys penning fiction with a higher heat factor. In order to balance the serious nature of her "real job" with the more salacious stories she writes, and to avoid uncomfortable conversations with her grandparents, the pen name of Michele Machado was created—and the stock photo in this bio was purchased. Now liberated by a nom de plume and hidden behind a beauty at a typewriter, Michele Machado is excited for the release of her first book, Market Street Cinema, on August 15, 2016.

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