From Publishers Weekly
Tell-all patter from a fictional gossip columnist spikes this deliciously juicy novel about Hollywood celebrities and secrets. In the beginning is Mary Jane Moran, a talented New York actress whose lumpish face and figure corral her in the small-time. Then she spends $67,000 on plastic surgery, becomes drop-dead beautiful and moves to L.A. where, reborn as Jahne Moore, she's instantly cast in a sizzling TV series. Co-starring are Lila Kyle, towering bitch-goddess daughter of an aging screen star, and corn-fed Texan Sharleen Smith, who's been on the lam since she and her half-brother Dean left their abusive father for dead. Goldsmith ( The First Wives Club ) spins out a dizzying whirl of subplots--Lila's crazy mother cooking up a comeback; Jahne's second chance at love with the director who broke her heart back when she was Mary Jane; an embittered comic who starts stalking Lila--and she enlivens each with a twist. While Goldsmith has little truck with realism, she perfectly conjures up the envy and insecurity, the toadying and backstabbing associated with the celebrity circuit. Raucous energy speeds the tale to a climax in which hitherto buried secrets (including one final lollapalooza) bring the stars crashing down. 100,000 first printing; BOMC main selection. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

ANNOTATION

A feisty and fun-filled tale of celebrity and beauty and its consequences that dissolves the glamorous veneer of Hollywood. Goldsmith gives readers a witty expose praised by Entertainment Weekly as "far sharper, far wittier, and far hipper than Judith Krantz. . . . A Satisfying, industry-tweaking, sticky-fingered hoot."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

With all the brio and brass of her best-selling debut novel, The First Wives Club, Olivia Goldsmith now turns to Hollywood - with this sharp, sassy Cinderella story, updated nineties style. Actress Mary Jane Moran - never a beauty - has just lost not only the off-Broadway role she created but also the only man she ever loved. Hollywood has stolen both, and rejected her as too fat, too plain, and at thirty-four, too old for the movie version. She has no power as an actress or a woman. After the despair and rage pass Mary Jane comes to a decision. She is determined to buy the one thing that might really change her life: beauty. Two years, forty pounds, sixty-seven thousand dollars, and an excruciating series of surgeries later, Mary Jane emerges as Jahne Moore - thin, gorgeous, and ready for the big time. In L.A. at last, she lands a part in TV's hottest new series, Three for the Road. Starring with Jahne are two other beauties with pasts of their own to overcome: Sharleen Smith, raised in a trailer in dirt-poor Texas, ignorant and eager to please, an easy mark for a rogue's gallery of Hollywood hustlers; and Lila Kyle, child of Hollywood, whose driving ambition - to surpass her famous mother in everything - will goad her to risk all in her obsessive desire to be the only star of Three for the Road. As these three "virgins" rocket into the celebrity stratosphere, their pasts resurface in disturbing, outrageous, and scandalous ways. All of them are desired - the fantasy of every man, the envy of every woman. The man who broke Mary Jane's heart, now a successful director, pursues Jahne both to star in his new film and to become his lover. Jahne, in longing and fear, awaits his recognition of her. Meanwhile Sharleen's childhood traumas scream from every tabloid. Lila Kyle loses her virginity in a career move and gains the leverage to discredit the other two women. But her plan backfires, resulting in the biggest Hollywood scandal of all time, one that threatens to t

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Tell-all patter from a fictional gossip columnist spikes this deliciously juicy novel about Hollywood celebrities and secrets. In the beginning is Mary Jane Moran, a talented New York actress whose lumpish face and figure corral her in the small-time. Then she spends $67,000 on plastic surgery, becomes drop-dead beautiful and moves to L.A. where, reborn as Jahne Moore, she's instantly cast in a sizzling TV series. Co-starring are Lila Kyle, towering bitch-goddess daughter of an aging screen star, and corn-fed Texan Sharleen Smith, who's been on the lam since she and her half-brother Dean left their abusive father for dead. Goldsmith ( The First Wives Club ) spins out a dizzying whirl of subplots--Lila's crazy mother cooking up a comeback; Jahne's second chance at love with the director who broke her heart back when she was Mary Jane; an embittered comic who starts stalking Lila--and she enlivens each with a twist. While Goldsmith has little truck with realism, she perfectly conjures up the envy and insecurity, the toadying and backstabbing associated with the celebrity circuit. Raucous energy speeds the tale to a climax in which hitherto buried secrets (including one final lollapalooza) bring the stars crashing down. 100,000 first printing; BOMC main selection. (May)

BookList - Ray Olson