Review: I'll be interested in the next book in the series
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 22, 2014
Hard Glamour by Maggie Marr seem like a realistic view of behind the scenes fame in LA. I say 'seems' because I have no idea what life is like for actors, agents, producers, singers, people trying to break into the business, etc. What I could imagine it would be life, Marr had surely captured the scene. Mainly because she lives it. Marr is a veteran of the Hollywood scene and has worked in the industry. Nothing better than writing what you know, right?Marr shows the gritty side of show business that ordinary people like myself never really see. It's seedy, competitive, and sometimes downright evil. Marr takes her characters through the tornado of fame and spins them around until you feel for them like you would your own friends. Her characters end up being touchable, real, and human. Bravo!We follow Lane Channing, a small-town girl from Kansas, trying to make her imprint in the entertainment industry. She's travels in her old Jeep while running out of money to LA hoping that her internship at an agency that reps some of the biggest stars in the biz will help her get her feet wet in Hollywood. One of the stars at the agency includes Dillon MacAvoy, an up and coming actor that is on the cusp of mega stardom. Lane and Dillon meet in an usual way: She almost hits him with her Jeep on her first day in LA. And things just go downhill from there. She loses her internship, she's tapped out of money, and her Jeep is stolen.On the upside, she happens to meet a knight in shining armor, a man named Choo, who helps her with a job. A job that just so happens to be for on of the most cockiest, womanizing actors, Dillon MacAvoy. Just her luck, huh?Of course, I don't want to tell you all the story. But there are a bevy of side characters that made me laugh, cringe, and just plain hate. Did anyone else think that Boom Boom, Dillon's publicist, sounded like Edna from The Incredibles?Hard Glamour gave me what I expected: A arrogant male who gets flipped on his butt by a stronger female who in turn sacrifices herself for his own good, which then in turn leads the male to realize life is better with the female and chases her down and HEA. Marr is not breaking the mold here, but that's fine. She doesn't have to. It's a tight romance that pulled me though without hiccuping over narrative and plot issues. But I will say, since it's not copy editing related, that Marr needs to look up disembodied action, and learn from hit. It's all over this book. It was really my main complaint and one of the reasons I didn't give this book a five lip bite rating.If you want a real-ish (I say ish becasue I'm sure all the things happen in Hollywood that Marr betrays) look into the clutches of Hollywood stardom with a hot romance through in, Hard Glamour is the book for you. I am looking forward to the next in the series and have high hopes from anything coming from Maggie Marr in the future.