Format: ebook
Published: June 13th, 2024
Age: Adult
Genre: Historical
Goodreads
Rating: 3/5 Stars
I went into this fully expecting to really enjoy it, and for quite a fair bit I did. The first part of the book feels like a Hollywood Novel for the 21st Century, despite its 1950s setting, exploring the glitz and glamour of Hollywood alongside the darker, seedier side, but things soon felt rocky once Loretta starts to establish herself.
TW: sexual assault
Loretta scams her way to America and to Hollywood, where she is determined to become a makeup artist. But things take a turn for the worse when, on her 21st birthday and wedding day, her new husband takes her a big party thrown by Tinseltown’s newest star, known as ‘The Emperor’. But it’s more than a party, and Loretta finds herself cornered by The Emperor himself. She escapes, with the help of a screenwriter, but the event makes her more determined to make it on her own terms, and sets her on a dangerous path, once she’s got her foot in the door at a studio, of course.
The setup was good and I liked Loretta’s character, a woman who is daring and eager, ambitious and with a sharp eye. But once the ‘revenge’ aspect kicked in, things felt really rushed. It doesn’t feel like the actual mechanics are taken into consideration, and any plot holes are quickly waved away by the characters themselves.
It felt like Loretta was surrounded by interesting, quirky characters but they soon fall flat and, like the plot itself, their own arcs feel rushed. There’s a whole buildup towards Loretta’s past and the secrets she’s hiding, but even that reveal felt skipped through and anticlimactic, and maybe a touch too obvious, too early on.
It felt jumpy and overall rushed – as I mentioned, I liked how it started and the build-up, but characters float in and out and we don’t ever really get a grasp on who various people are, and the budding relationship between Loretta and Eliot feels so strained, with the complications between them being little more than arguments that could easily be resolved if Loretta didn’t get offended by every little thing. By the end, I found her to be a really frustrating character who rushes in (and out of) things with little consideration, including the way she takes her revenge on those who wronged her.
This book has a strong start, enough I got invested and was completely along for the ride, but eventually it tipped over into boring, frustrating and predictable. There was some really good stuff, but unfortunately, it’s buried with more messy parts of the book later on.
Thank you to Viking for providing this arc via NetGalley. Views remain my own.
Reading Challenge
Barbie Reading Challenge
Prompt: Silver Plater – Give you the world, if I was your man – A book set in a place where you would love to travel to
Progress: 8/17 Completed
Unwrapping Words 