The Actress by Elizabeth Sims

3.5 Stars

Well, this certainly put a smile on my face.  Most of the plot is completely implausible but you know what, the very over-the-topness of it all is what saved it from falling at every hurdle.  Like Los Angeles itself everything is overblown and just a facade of beautiful people, phoney wealth and image means more than anything.  Yes, the scenarios are pretty much laughable (in a bad way) but such is the talent of the author that you simply don't care about any of that because the telling is so good.  Ms Sims' tongue is firmly in her cheek all the way through and that makes it a particularly joyous read - nothing is taken too seriously but neither is it mocked, it is just warm and wry and witty (some snort aloud moments crop up too).

The details of Rita's single mom life are crushingly accurate; particularly the struggles with her son as he pushes against his boundaries.  At points I found myself wanting to grab Rita and tell her this is normal - all kid's go through a hitting phase and through a telling you they hate you phase; they just do and it gets better, honeslty it does.  Of course her home situation isn't helped by lack of funds and a skeevy ex-husband who makes your skin crawl whenever he appears on the page (melodramatically so).  Actually, the whole thing is high camp melodrama (darn, that should have been my review title!).

I was expecting a little more of the struggling actress shtick but it is strangely truncated; not sure if that was to the overall detriment of the story or not.  The whole Tenaway plot though left me rolling my eyes.  I was with it until the tale of Eileen's husband dieing in Brazil starts to be investigated and then it just goes very, very bizarre - so bizarre it makes Dexter look like real life.  The threads of the plot do come together in the end but not without some heavy string pulling by the author and, in places, it shows just what a stretch some of the links are.

You know what, I don't actually care that it had no verisimilitude and was completely over the top - I loved the telling, I loved Rita and I WILL be reading more Elizabeth Sims because she knows how to entertain a reader.