Starlit

August 30, 2010
Soap star/entrepreneur/self-improvement guru Rinna whips up a breezy, good tart versus bad tart Tinseltown tale where the women are hot, the men are weaklings, and ambitions are unbridled. Struggling actresses Tally, Sadie, and Mandy finally get a break—Tally scores a part on a hit TV series; smart and opportunistic Sadie lands a job with superagent Josh Gold; and fake-chested Mandy proves a natural at Dandy Candy porn studios. Their love lives are another matter altogether. Tally hooks up with Hollywood hunk and morally corrupt Gabriel, who makes an unholy alliance with Tally's nemesis that scotches Tally's chance at true love and a meaningful career. Sadie's boss-then-husband Josh falls victim to his dormant drug habit, with disastrous results. Only Mandy makes the sleaze factor work for her. Glammy, savvy, a little trashy, and a lot of fun, this insider's take on getting ahead in Hollywood may be unapologetically short on substance, but it's long on entertainment.

September 1, 2010

Actress Rinna's debut features an unscrupulous Hollywood diva who will stop at nothing to defeat a younger rival.

Tally, Sadie and Mandy, three ingénues who came to L.A. hoping to break into acting, are still waitressing despite years of lessons with a tyrannical acting coach. As they serve champagne and mini-cheeseburgers at the Vanity Fair after-party one Oscar night, little do the gal pals know what destiny has in store. Tally's exotic beauty, talent and sheer niceness net her a part on primetime soap Dana Point, after its erstwhile star, Susie, weaseled out of her TV contract to star in a movie. Sadie talks her way into a job as assistant to ICA super-agent Josh, while Mandy gets a boob job and quickly rises to the heights of porn stardom. Things are going swimmingly for Tally until Susie (a onetime call girl and perennial nymphomaniac) is fired from the movie for, among many other transgressions, unspeakable acts with a camel! Blackmailing the producer, she returns to Dana Point, where she's intent on smothering Tally's career in its cradle. Susie's gossip mill, cranked tirelessly by her network of hairdressers and other sycophants, dishes vicious innuendo about Tally's moral character to the tabloids. And Tally isn't doing herself any favors by her inability to resist the attentions of the latest ER-clone lothario doc, Gabriel, when she knows he's only using her for sex and paparazzi bait. When Tally meets indy producer Mac, who taps her for his latest art-house masterpiece shooting in Paris, it's true love, the path of which is strewn with plot complications, all hinging on the stupidity of the major players. No one sees through Susie until it's too late. Mac, for a savvy Hollywood sophisticate, is particularly gullible—he marries the superannuated harpy. The usual clichés abound: name- and brand-dropping, regular intervals of kinky sex and superficial characterizations.

Cheap thrills, but in hardcover, not nearly cheap enough.

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