I'm really not sure where I heard of this book, but I added it to my wishlist, and when I did a book swap recently, the person sending to me chose this off my wishlist to send. I had totally forgotten about it, but when I read the blurb it did sound like something I would like, so I was happy to receive it. I picked it up only a couple of weeks later because I wanted to get to it soon!
The heroine of the book is Salma Lowe. She is in her early thirties and she is the daughter of Hollywood royalty - her parents met on a film and became super famous. Her dad is now dead but her mother is still alive, although the two have a difficult relationship. When Salma was fifteen, her sister Tawney - older by several years - was found dead in the swimming pool of her Hollywood home. She had been murdered. The killer was never found, but Salma always suspected Tawney's ex fiance, Cal. She went off the rails and ended up in rehab, a disgraced almost made it, pure tabloid fodder.
She now does tours for tourists, driving a minibus around some of the most notorious spots in Hollywood, such as where the Black Dahlia died. The last stop on her tour is Tawney's house. She's there one afternoon when she spots another body in the swimming pool. She jumps in to save the girl, but she's already dead. It turns out that the girl was supposed to be playing Tawney in a new film about her life, which Cal is directing. Salma clearly suspects him for this death, as well, but in order to find out the truth, she has to get close to him again.
The book flashes between the present day and when Tawney died and how Salma experienced a lot of trauma at that time. She and her mother were never close and she's now a complete disappointment to her. There's a family friend, Jack, who her mother might now be seeing, and who knows far too much about family matters. Salma is an addict and a wholly unreliable narrator, but it's easy to like her and want her to succeed. The book verges on kind of Charles Manson territory, as well as Harvey Weinstein type actions and just the scuzziness of Hollywood in general.
I liked it and I would definitely read something else by the same author. I'm giving this four out of five.
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