Review: Hollywood Heroine

Hollywood Heroine by Sarah Kuhn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although I felt that the plot sometimes struggled to keep its head above the message, I did ultimately enjoy this one - not quite enough to make it one of my top books of 2021, though, and not enough to want to continue further with the series either.

The characters in this series have capital-I Issues, which they do work on, but which are, for me, overdramatic sometimes. They also have capital-I Identities, which are often closely related to their Issues, and which define them to a high degree. I commented early on in my reading that it was ironic that in a book where there was such strong objection to the main characters being treated merely as their identities and not as individuals, the more any character was functioning as an antagonist, the more they were defined by their identity and had no other discernable characteristics. Reflecting afterwards, I'm not sure that's true. I think the actual point being made might not have been "treat us as people, not identities" but "treat our identities as equally valuable," which is a subtly different message.

This inevitably flattens the characters and limits how much they can change. At one point, arrogant characters who have wronged the protagonist apologise to her, but it comes across as very stilted, as if the author couldn't fully imagine what a genuine apology from someone with that identity might sound like. And later, they just revert to their former impervious arrogance, having learned nothing from their experience. It's certainly true that there are people like that, but when essentially the entire supporting cast is that way, I'm left wondering: is this ideologically-driven prejudice ("people like that (or even people in general) simply can't break out of their identity") or lack of ability to write minor characters/antagonists that are not clichés bordering on caricatures?

Anyway, that's what I didn't like, and why I won't persevere further with the series. The story itself, when you could see it through the message, is entertaining enough, with action, mystery (though the protagonist takes a good long while to figure out what is going on, even when it's pretty obvious), and the odd twist (which, again, are mostly predictable). There are strong subplots around relationships and working on the above-mentioned Issues, which in this case centre around the protagonist feeling like she needs to perfectly fix everything by herself and not having much capacity to handle change in other people. I commented on the previous book in the series to the effect that the personal stuff was almost more central than the outward plot, and that's the case again.

For its audience, this will resonate strongly and be something they love wholeheartedly. It happens that I'm not that audience, though, and so for me it fell a bit short.

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