Imagine that 25 years after JD Salinger wrote “Catcher In the Rye”, he wrote a sequel. In this book, Holden Caulfield was even more depressed, lost, and mentally unstable than he was in the first book. Also pretend that this sequel is not nearly as well written and lacks depth and creativity.

This is kind of what happened with Bret Easton Ellis and his new book “Imperial Bedrooms”. In 1985 Ellis wrote his highly acclaimed novel “Less than Zero.” This book was called the “Catcher in the Rye” of the MTV generation and was Ellis’ first novel.

In “Less Than Zero” the main character is Clay, a rich college student and Ellis’ autobiographical character, who has returned to Los Angeles from his east coast school for the winter holidays. The story takes place in the ‘80s and is a bleak and nihilistic tale of drugs, sex, money, and crime. Clay is your typical depressed, wealthy teenager who gets caught up in everything he tried to escape by going to school on the East Coast.

Fast forward 25 years and you have Clay coming home to LA yet again for Christmas. He is not the same man he was in the ‘80s. He has an iPhone, violent tendencies towards women, and his binge drinking has turned into serious alcoholism. He is even more numb and hopeless then he was in the 80’s due to middle age setting in and massive amounts of expensive tequila.

Clay runs into the same people he hung out with and tried to stay away from in Less than Zero. Everyone is still sleeping with everyone for power, drugs and money except now they all have had plastic surgery and multiple divorces under their belts.

Every page feels like déja vu because Ellis is walking us through “Less than Zero” all over again. Ellis has created many parallels between the two books to show that nothing in Hollywood ever really changes. However, Ellis is glamorizing nothing in this book.

Instead, he reveals the filthy, twisted side of Hollywood that the rest of America never sees just like he did in his first novel. He takes it a little too far however with writing about the violent murders of a few friends of Clay’s being posted on YouTube.

Bret Easton Ellis has perfected the style of the “cringe as you read” with his other acclaimed novels like “American Psycho.” “Imperial Bedrooms” feels like an unimaginative follow up to a fantastic novel.

Ellis took the easy way out with “Imperial Bedrooms” and should have left “Less Than Zero” alone, letting people decide what happened to Clay and his over privileged, under loved friends.

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