Jack Preston

I downloaded this for free through the New York Public Library at Archive.org.

This book is very much one of its time period--1932--but even with those shortcomings, it actually has a lot of charm. Lira is a popular Hollywood actress with a tyrannical mother and a dirty secret of a first marriage. She falls for a fan, an Albertan rancher, and has to battle her mother and a stranglehold Hollywood contract to be with the man she loves. The romance is very well done, quite sweet, and it's easy to picture everything play out like a 1930s movie. I was surprised to enjoy that part of the story. There is also a refreshingly progressive feel to the plot; Lira is very much an independent woman, and in the end, her cowboy is the one who sacrifices the most to be with her.

Now, the POV of the book is weird. It's told in first person by her best friend, a guy, but he describes tons of things he wasn't there to see. I coped with the disorientation by imagining it as a black and white movie with him providing the voice-over in parts.

I read for research purposes, and I did find some wonderful details that I have not seen elsewhere. For example, when they started filming, the first cameraman would say, "Light 'em up!" No, "Lights, camera, action."

Of course, the book has the cliche minority depictions one must expect of the time. Minorities are only shown as "the help," bad accents and all. But then, much of the cast is stereotypical, from Lira's shrew of a mother to the leering studio exec. I was really put-off of the book at first, with its overdone description of Lira and blase talk of the casting couch, but Lira quickly established herself as a good protagonist to follow.… (mehr)