A Starlet's Secret to a Sensational Afterlife
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A budding starlet and her handsome-but-moody co-star go from bitter enemies to reluctant partners when they get tangled up in the disappearance of a beautiful young actress in 1930s Hollywood.
Eighteen-year-old Henrietta arrives in Los Angeles in 1934 with dreams of trading her boring life for stardom.
She’s determined to make it as an actress, despite her family’s doubts and rumors of would-be starlets gone missing. And by the skin of her teeth, she pulls it off! A serendipitous job offer arrives and Henrietta finds herself on a whirlwind publicity tour for a major film role—with a vexingly unpleasant actor tapped by the studio to be her fake boyfriend.
But fierce Henrietta has more in common with brooding Declan than she realizes. They both have gifts that they are hiding, for fear of being labeled strange: he is immune to injury and she can speak to ghosts. When the co-stars get tangled up in the disappearance of a beautiful young actress, they go from bitter enemies and pretend lovers to reluctant partners—and possibly even friends.
Together, they might be the only people in Hollywood who can do something about these poor missing girls. And in doing so . . . they might just fall in love for real.
This whip smart, seductive caper by the author of Murder for the Modern Girl has the perfect combination of romance, vengeance, and a hint of the supernatural, set in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Hand to fans of These Violent Delights and My Lady Jane.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A starlet and a stuntman team up to solve a string of Hollywood disappearances in this fiercely feminist speculative caper by Kulper (Murder for the Modern Girl). It's 1934, and newly clairvoyant 18-year-old aspiring actor Henrietta Newhouse has just left Chicago for a serendipitous job opportunity in Los Angeles. Elsewhere in L.A., Declan Collins's manager suggests that the 19-year-old abandon stunt work for on-screen acting, lest someone notice his preternatural invincibility. Henny and Declan meet and butt heads during a joint screen test, but their electric chemistry lands Henny a major role with prestigious Silver Wing Studios and Declan a gig as Henny's pretend boyfriend, to help elevate her image. The duo bicker constantly until each learns that the other is secretly investigating why Silver Wing actresses keep vanishing: Declan because he's been hired by a missing girl's family, and Henny because she encountered the ghost of her friend Miriam after the rising star purportedly quit the business and moved back home. Kulper delivers an action-packed mystery replete with witty dialogue and buoyed by an ardent, slow-burn romance that enthralls while spotlighting Hollywood's long history of abusing, commodifying, and discarding women. Most characters cue as white. Ages 14–up.
