Sometimes a book comes out and you wonder why (example just about ANYTHING Annoying Author “writes”). And if you do pick it up and read it, you wonder why you even bothered to spend your time or money (coughcoughAnnnoyingAuthorcoughcough).

Given the above and the fact I kept falling asleep (the kind of sleep where one minute you are awake and the next thing you know it’s two hours later and you’ve drooled all over the couch like a Newfoundland on Mucinex) whenever I tried to read Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations you would have thought I would just take the hints, close the book, shove it deep into the library tote bag and curl up Mr Couch with something wholesome like the third season of Archer and a packet of Swiss Rolls even though Swiss Rolls are so darn sweet I can taste colour.

My stupid brain ignored all the hints and warnings and epic nap time (aka brain escape) and kept slogging through the darn book. I feel awful and am sure the late Peter Evans was a wonderful writer but no. The ingredients are all there. Reporter who is a friend of rich and famous, down on her luck movie goddess, a book project, London, Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. But the end result was more dull and unpalatable than the time I tried to make chili without fresh spices or my first attempt to make scones.

It’s not that I’m a hater. Ava Gardner is one of the all time Hollywood beauties. I’m the person who cut class (really hope my Dad isn’t reading this review), took the Bentley shuttle to Harvard Square, bought Ava: My Story and started reading the darn thing before I had barely left the bookstore as a college freshman. It’s a miracle I didn’t walk right in front of a damn bus that day.  If the publishers and the Peter Evans/Ava Gardner estates meant Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations to be a memorial to them and the chance for the public to read what happened and could have been with their stillborn attempt at writing Ava’s memoirs then I beg to differ.

All I got out of Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations is Ava likes a) men b) to swear c) is leery of revealing all d) is broke and everyone in her circle doesn’t want her to work with Peter Evans. And yeah, Ava says she never never ever claimed her third husband was 110 lbs of umm…man meat. (Once again really hoping my Dad isn’t reading this review).  And calling the book Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations implies there is something beyond shocking and tawdry to reveal. Maybe I’m dim because I didn’t find anything shocking or secret (besides the third husband man meat claim). The most shocking thing is that Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations even got published.