In her everyday clothes, Genevieve isn’t a particularly memorable personality. But she’s obsessed with old Hollywood and only falls for men who remind her of her favorite movie stars, so feels she must bring a movie star personality to the Hollywood parties she attends. While Genevieve is experimenting with being a new woman in a movie star dress, the reader learns about her tragic past, her troubled home life, and her previous failures with men—along with a full cast of side plots of which it’s not always easy to keep track. The book is a lot of fun for film buffs, filled with the aura of old Hollywood glamour and tidbits of juicy gossip about the stars, but the author is sure to give enough background for those readers less familiar with the time period.
The main drama centers on Genevieve’s entanglement with three men who remind her of her three favorite Hollywood stars—Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Humphrey Bogart—and an unhappily married woman who purchased a dress worn by a murderess.
This is juicy reading fun at times but this is ultimately too flawed in character and plot to be truly satisfying. Genevieve is playing so many different roles for the people in her life even when not dressed in famous clothing that her drama is both difficult to follow and dragged on too long. The author keeps the numerous plots afloat but most of the periphery characters are forgettable one-dimensional props. The writing is strong, if meandering, but the wildly fluctuating dialects of each character—most often from stiff old Hollywood mimicry to Spanglish slang, for no reason—can be disorienting.
After a whirlwind dénouement, THE WOMAN IN THE MOVIE STAR DRESS is a tantalizingly sexy caper that concludes with less cliché than a Hollywood movie.
~IndieReader.