Poor Little Bitch Girl

December 14, 2009
At 72, with 26 bestsellers under her belt, Collins (Drop Dead Beautiful
) prowls familiar terrain with this overheated tale of the filthy rich, nasty poor, and cravenly ambitious. Collins picks up the saga of the Santangelos with spoiled-brat Annabelle Maestro, the daughter of two Tinseltown icons, who runs a high-priced call-girl ring in New York with her coke-sniffing nogoodnik boyfriend, Frankie. Annabelle’s mom’s murder brings the black sheep home to L.A. to mourn for a parent she never loved—and to lean on the adventurous Denver, a quick-witted, sex-starved lawyer who’s defending the No. 1 suspect in the murder, Annabelle’s dad, film legend Ralph Maestro. But Denver also juggles the rescue of his missing best friend, Carolyn, who’s fooling around with a horn dog U.S. senator, and a few hot one-night stands. For all the convoluted connections, mismatches, and throw-away references to ripped-from-the-headlines news and celebrities, Collins is at her seasoned best with this raunchy, retro hot-sheets romance. “It’s men, dollface,” one brassy Hollywood agent muses. “They all spew forth the same tired old lines.” As does Collins. And it’s impossible not to fall for it. Again.

December 1, 2009
The eponymous bitch girl of the title is Annabelle Maestro, the daughter of two famous movie stars who flees L.A. for New York to escape her indifferent parents. She hooks up with coke-addicted DJ Frankie to start a high-priced escort business. And then her mothers murder makes headlines. Denver Jones, a beautiful, talented attorney who was briefly friendly with Annabelle, is called in when Annabelles father, Ralph, becomes a suspect in his wifes death. Ralph orders Denver to fly to New York to bring Annabelle back for the funeral. In Washington, D.C., Denvers best friend, Carolyn, is desperately trying to get a hold of her to share some exciting news: Carolyn is pregnant with the child of the married senator she works for. Denver keeps missing Carolyns calls because she has her hands full with Annabelle, who returns to L.A. determined to hide her secret business, and with her sights set on Bobby, the devastatingly handsome son of Lucky Santangelo, the heroine of several of Collins previous novels. Though the characters are frequently vapid and shallow, their over-the-top antics are undeniably scintillating. Expect plenty of demand for this page-turning sudser.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)