really hated this ( )

I picked this up for research purposes as it depicts early 1920s Hollywood. I had not noticed that it was published by Bethany House, but the Christian theme was so evident as I read that I stopped to check who published it.

The main characters are well-rounded to a point, and the book defies the initial romantic set-up. Doyle Lawrence is the darling of his small town in Nebraska. He loves poetry, but his lawyer father shoves him toward Yale and his destiny in the law. Zee Miller is the darling of Doyle's eye, the daughter of a grim, controlling preacher. She's all passion and verve, determined to escape and become a Hollywood star. The first quarter of the book is very predictable. Their families forbid them from seeing each other; Doyle goes to university, hates it, and dodges obligations by going to war, which leaves him an angry, broken hobo in the following years. Zee, being the bad role model, falls in with actors, gets raped, carries a child out of wedlock, but eventually makes it to Hollywood and engages in a ruthless climb to the top.

Zee's characterization bugged me more and more as the book went on because I felt so bludgeoned over the head with the moral message. "If you're a woman is ambitious! Who defies your abusive father! Who is creative! Well, you're gonna get raped and fall in with gangsters and crooks and you'll get yours." And it didn't have to go that heavy-handed. That's the real tragedy here. Zee is a sympathetic character to cheer for from the start, and as it went on, she became such a stereotypical Hollywood Bad Girl. This is a modern book, but this characterization was quite the thing during the 1920s as churches rallied in favor of censorship; I already read a horrible book by Edgar Rice Burroughs that did much the same thing, but focused on drug use and perversion in Hollywood.

Zee's not the only one who falls into a type. Her friend Molly never feels like more than a prop. Many of the people in Hollywood are blatantly based on real people--which is fine--but nothing fresh is done with them. Meanwhile, Lawrence's eventual redemption has a note of realism to it, but he comes full circle in a cloyingly pleasant way. The ending has several big surprises that I won't spoil.

For my research needs, I did make some notes. His research on Los Angeles in the era was evident, though he doesn't go as deep into Hollywood and the movie industry of the time. Overall, though, I was left frustrated by the lack of nuance when it came to the message and how most of the characters developed. ( )