Book Review: The Woman in the Movie Star Dress

Book: The Woman in the Movie Star Dress by Praveen Asthana

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Publisher: Doublewood Press

Description:

What if the clothes you wore carried ghostly fragments of your soul, and somehow those fragments got transferred to one who wore those clothes next?

The Woman in the Movie Star Dress is the story of Genevieve Nightcloud who comes to Hollywood to escape her past. She finds work in a vintage clothing store that sells clothes used in the movies. One day she discovers a way to transfer human character through these vintage clothes, and she uses this ability to transform from a lonely, insecure young woman to a glamorous heartbreaker.

But she also discovers that with the good comes the bad as character flaws are transferred too. She begins to worry: what if one of the vintage clothes she has sold to some unsuspecting customer had been previously worn by a deeply troubled soul? One day her fears become crystallized—intrigued by a man who comes asking about a beautiful scarlet dress she has recently sold, she looks into its history and discovers a secret that terrifies her. So begins a quest to find the scarlet dress complicated by a budding romance and the threads of her past, which intervene like trip wires. Emotions run high, and in the background the quickening drumbeat of the race to find the scarlet dress, potent as a loose, loaded weapon.

The novel weaves humor, magic, romance, and suspense into a fresh and entertaining tale. An added bonus is the romp through the classic movies and femme fatales of old Hollywood.


Rating: 1 star (Did Not Finish)

Review:

The Woman in the Movie Star Dress follows Genevieve Nightcloud a young woman with a boat load of self esteem issues. She is fascinated with Old Hollywood almost to the point of obsession. She compares people she knows and meets to actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She also lives extremely vicariously through those old films.

It's no surprise that she's working at a store that sells clothes that were worn in films. One day a shipment arrives and it contains a red dress, a dress that looks similar to one that Marilyn Monroe wore in a movie. The dress was quickly purchased by a customer but some time later a mysterious man showed up at the store looking for it.

The description for this book really had me interested in reading it because I love watching those old movies and I found the concept of feelings and emotions being left on clothes and possibly being transferred to others, interesting. However, the story just wasn't there and not to mention it was very boring and all over the place. I read a good amount of this book before I decided to stop and what I read barely had a hint of a mystery in it. The story was mostly about sad sack Genevieve trying to feel good about herself while trying to get guys to find her attractive and her desire to have sex.

Genevieve is both annoying and pathetic and after a while I was so tired of the story and her constantly telling the reader about her wish to be more confident and to be a femme fatale. Her low self-esteem issues were weighing this already slow moving dull story down. I wish Genevieve was a more interesting (as well as confident) character. There is nothing wrong with a woman feeling empowered and wanting sex but Genevieve's approach was far from it.

This had so much promise with the story opening up with a woman buying the dress that Marilyn Monroe wore in the movie Niagara and while wearing the dress it appears the woman planned to kill her husband.

After that the story falls flat. The story tried to invoke the glamour and class of Old Hollywood but the mundane plot, lackluster characters and equally lackluster attempt at a mystery made this a Did Not Finish.

The one good thing about this book was it did have a lot of good info on Old Hollywood even if there were a few mistakes such as in the book Genevieve stated that Lee Radziwill was Jackie Kennedy's cousin but she is really Jackie's sister. A simple fact check would have shown that.