Catfights and Sibling Rivalry: Joan Collins Book Review

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Joan Collins

Joan Collins' dazzling first novel is a juicy tale of sex and revenge. Actress and singer Chloe Carriere has been up and down the celebrity ladder for more than 25 years but when a prime opportunity for superstardom arises she finds herself taking part in the most breathtaking battle since the search for Scarlett O'Hara. Offscreen, a more personal conflict takes place as Chloe wonders whether her partner will ever stop playing away from home. Bitter rivalry, infidelity and a smouldering casting couch are the compelling ingredients of this sizzling tale.

I just finished this book today, I can't say I loved the book, but I didn't hate it either. All I could think of when I read this book was that this was Dynasty, though it was mentioned a few times. When I first started reading it I thought that each part would be about each actress that was auditioning for the part of Miranda Hamilton in the new show Saga which to me is Dynasty. I thought that this would be interesting, then I got to the second part and only the first chapter was about the second actress and the next was about the next one auditioning. It became clear who would be getting the part by this point, and from the description of the character I could only imagine one person as this character so I decided to cast this as if it were a tv show and I did it for when the book was written and did a cast for who would play the part now, I could only see Elizabeth Taylor as Emerald even though Emerald is blonde with green eyes. What really threw me was the random stalker that the character Emerald Barrymore had, suddenly he was out to kill all the actresses who were auditioning for the part, I was like WTF where did this come from. I highly doubt anyone will go out and buy this book, so I will spoil some of the plot here. He manages to kill one of the actresses, then tries to kill our leading lady of the book at her Las Vegas show, which lands him in jail, where he is raped by other inmates and guards. This whole sub-plot was totally unnecessary, there was enough drama that this was overkill. And the most of it was predictable. It was very easy to see what was going to happen. In the end of course it is a happy ending, but a bit rushed. I doubt that I would ever go out of my way to read anything else that she wrote, but it was fun to do this for this blog.

My Cast