Review: I Wrote This For Attention by Lukas Gage

 

Publication Date: October 2025

Source: Borrowed from library

Blurb:      [ Goodreads ]

Lukas Gage was having one of the shittiest weeks of his life. His beloved grandmother was dying. And Lukas was sitting next to his father, a man who had been mostly absent in his son’s childhood—except when talking to Lukas about tits because he loved nothing more than tits, and listening to Howard Stern on the radio. They were across the street from a building in Century City, where months prior, Lukas had to grapple with the dissolution of his marriage. This week had it all: death, divorce, and daddy issues.

In that room, Lukas did the smartest thing anyone can do in a crisis: doom scroll to see what random people on the internet were saying about him. People were calling him an attention whore—and they were absolutely right. Lukas Gage was no stranger to going viral. He loved attention. As a toddler, he set his room on fire. As a child, he hugged and flirted with women at Hooters to his father’s delight. As a teen, he stole handles of alcohol and cherry cough syrup. He had sex at a restroom in Chili’s, and fell hopelessly in love with a girl who wore an ankle monitor. He became an actor and filmed that scene in White Lotus (if you know, you know). Lukas was scared of attention and yet he craved it more than anything in the world.

I Wrote This for Attention is a riveting, exquisite memoir full of heart that chronicles Lukas’s coming of age in the haunting underbelly of San Diego and clawing his way to stardom.

As someone who loves a celebrity autobiography or memoir, when I heard about this one I knew I wanted to read it. I haven't had the most interactions with Lukas Gage - I mean I have seen The White Lotus and heard about his marriage which Kim Kardashian officiated- but asides from that I didn't really know much about him. 

That all changed after reading I Wrote This For Attention. Once I started reading, I could not stop and flew through the book in a night. Lukas's raw and unfiltered deep dive into his life from his childhood to now really does not shy away from the gory details of what he has experienced over his 30 years. I found it shocking to read just how much he has experienced and lived through while being roughly the same age I am. 

I found it extremely impactful reading about his turbulent childhood - his parents' separation and how his relationship with his mom and his dad affected him in very different ways, his troubled sibling and his own struggles with addiction and seeking validation in the forms of friends or partners. The topic of how early childhood shapes us as adults really ripples through the entire memoir and you leave the reading experience feeling a sense of deeply understanding how each later action could correlate to ones of his early life.  

An extremely raw, emotional and thought provoking story of Lukas Gage's life, thoughts and mental health that is one I will be recommending in future.