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Young and new to the Los Angeles landscape, Avan Jogia was thrust into the spotlight upon his debut performance in Nickelodeon\u2019s \u201cVictorious.\u201d<\/a> The show\u2019s pilot episode, which aired in 2010, attracted an audience of millions, accumulating even more fans over the course of its four seasons. Avan Jogia has since had various roles in film and television in addition to also being widely known for his social media presence. The release of his book, \u201cAutopsy (of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob)<\/a>,\u201d is meant to be an artistic rendition of its namesake, dissecting the life of \u201can ex-teen heartthrob\u201d and his progression through his career \u2014 namely, the behind-the-screen parts of his life that go unnoticed by an audience. The book begins with a few short pages of prose detailing the start of his career and his mother\u2019s simultaneous diagnosis with ovarian cancer. Though it\u2019s built as a memoir of sorts, \u201cAutopsy\u201d is made up of pages upon pages of poetry focusing on themes of fame, sex and mental health.\u00a0<\/p>\n While primarily composed of poems, the book also includes scattered pieces of prose, though these are few and far between. The first poem promises an introspective look at Avan Jogia\u2019s life in Hollywood, and the separate prose sections discuss how, as a teenager, he was forced to experience independence in Los Angeles after his mother went back to Canada to receive cancer treatment. In all of the novel\u2019s prose sections, Jogia\u2019s writing is raw, replete with dry wit and sardonic humor that instantly captures the reader\u2019s attention. There is true poetry in his story, in describing the isolation that comes with the fame of a child actor and the hardship of navigating Hollywood while coping with a parent\u2019s cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n Yet despite its promising start, the rest of Jogia\u2019s writing fakes its depth and fails to live up to the name of the collection, only grazing the surface of the issues it claims to address while revealing little about Jogia himself. Jogia\u2019s vague and contrived descriptions of fame and \u201ccoming of age\u201d focus on his experiences on set or the unhealthy relationships people often form with celebrities, delivered in the form of \u201cwisdom.\u201d It screams to prove its poignancy, to insist that it is profound. The unfortunate product is a series of clich\u00e9-adjacent phrases and notes-app style poetry that could have been meaningful, if only it hadn\u2019t been chopped into a few lines for the allure of being mysterious.\u00a0<\/p>\n Insulting the intelligence of the reader, Jogia spoon-feeds us the most fundamental themes, from \u201cI know what it feels like to be used\u201d to \u201cego is a sickness.\u201d Poetry should evoke thinking, using figurative language or symbolism to set a rhythm to the writing and leave the reader with questions. It is a writer\u2019s job to trust that their readers will spend time with their work and try to decipher it. Bringing critical analysis into poetry allows for deeper engagement, but readers will be unable to do that here. Instead, Jogia does not match these demands of good poetry, often ending his poems with a sentence summarizing the exact point he intended to make with the poem, removing the intellectual nature of analysis and watering down the reading experience in doing so.\u00a0<\/p>\n