A review by jaygabler
Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins

funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Hollywood Wives has been given new life with a 40th anniversary reissue, but it was long ago guaranteed immortality. A gilt-edged, leather-bound copy of Jackie Collins’s novel has pride of place on the schadenfreude bookshelf. Anyone seeking assurance that rich and famous people are absolutely miserable and obsessed with petty grievances can take Hollywood Wives into the bubble bath.

It might be awkward to celebrate Hollywood Wives’ milestone birthday just as movie actors and writers are taking to the picket line, but the story of these characters and SAG-AFTRA, if set in the present day, would be just as free from actual moviemaking as the original novel.

Sadie LaSalle would be trying to get Buddy Hudson on TikTok, with Buddy left wondering whether a doppelgänger account was run by his twin or simply a deepfake. Gina Germaine would be pitching a reality series, Ross Conti would be mulling offers from Pornhub, and Montana Gray would be on the picket line trying to answer reporters’ questions about whether it really counts as striking when she’s never had a screenplay actually produced.

While the foibles of Collins’s characters remain recognizable, the world they lived in is long gone.
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