Sometimes all you need to know about a novel is the front cover. Palm Beach has blond babe in a cut to there swimsuit with a diamond lizard pin, The World is Full of Married Men features a cheating hubby smooching on a babe whilst a family photo stares over Mr McCheater’s shoulder, Valley of the Dolls has all those lovely pills scattered every which way, Personal Effects has a soft focus Old Hollywood-ish shot of a lovely gal with a bare back and pearls.
And The Movie Set has a faceless bimbo in a tiny red bikini on laying on pool steps while a dark haired hunk of man flesh shows off his sculpted chest and looks blankly to the side.
Dearest Readers, June Flaum Singer’s The Movie Set ain’t Shakespeare. Heck, it’s not even a poorly acted telenovela.It’s the tale of four gals who met in school and their lives intertwine for the next twenty years. Wasn’t that basically the plot of Personal Effects and Debutantes and Personal Effects and Lace and their ilk? Yes…but The Movie Set has it’s own unique qualities. (Can’t believe I typed THAT with a straight face!).
Oh good golly lolly the adventures Buffy, Cleo, Suzannah and Cassie have!
The core of the book is Ohio’s answer to a young Vivien Leigh, Buffy Ann. What could be possibly more fascinating than a lovely young gal who falls head over heels with the boy in her Speech class, marries the boy who then becomes the King of the Ohio malls and finally the head of King Studios? Every girl just wants to be Mrs Todd King and have all the babies right?
Between declaring her lurve for Todd and her constant ZOMG I have to have the babies, Buffy manages to stay friends with her buddies from college. There’s Cleo, the Jersey Princess turned gal who knows everyone and everyone in Hollywood, Old California Society waif Cassie and the only person who can possibly rival Buffy-kins in looks model/actress/singer/slut bunny/junkie Suzannah.
And there’s also the sensible Mary Sue character, Buffy’s big sister Suellen who exists to be moral and the perfect All-American stable one of the bunch. Suellen is the person who would have the moral fiber to NOT read this book. If Suellen was real and lived in our world she’d recycle, home school her kids, volunteer and make Real Simple magazine look like child’s play.
I am not Suellen.
Things come to a head when Buffy’s perfect hubby Todd gets the notion to buy a movie studio from Suzannah’s soon to be ex-husband. The newly named King Studios promptly gets bogged down by a doomed movie White Lily.
Buffy’s perfect life is shattered. Buffy goes from ZOMG Todd to ZOMG buy jewelry and boink a doctor. And the reader (me) goes “hey does Poppy wanna share some of them there drugs?”. And the hardest drugs I take are Extra Strength Tylenol. Please share the good stuff Poppy.
Because, truly you need something to slog through this novel unless you’re fourteen or out of your mind on something. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I WAS fourteen when I first read this hot mess of a book.
Now you’re thinking, come on The Movie Set can’t be that bad. Oh Dearest Readers, permit me to quote from page 127 for the sake of this review.
We need to set the scene. Suzannah the Slut Bunny has turned to Buffy and Todd to help in scandal that could cost Suzannah’s contract as THE face of Durell cosmetics and perfume. A glowing pregnant Buffy and Todd have suggested to Suzannah that oh maybe tell Durell you’re preggers, he’ll divorce his wife and marry you.
“If she succeeds in weaning Durell away from his wife, there’ll be blood on our hands,” I said mournfully to Todd.
“I know”, he moaned. “I can’t forgive myself. But I didn’t think-I had no idea he was married, did you?”
“No…I don’t recall that she ever-” I felt a sharp pain and then there was another. And I recognized the pain this time. It was a labor pain!
God help us, Todd! The blood isn’t on our hands at all! It’s between my thighs.
And the book gets worse from there. Honestly. When your favorite character isn’t Saint Buffy or All American Suellen but the scheming, drug pushing, husband beating, will do anything to make her husband Elvis Beau a star Poppy, you might want to put a novel on the never again list. And you know what? The fourteen year old me would stare at the adult me in horror…