Reviewer: Lori Graham
Title: Monkey Star
Author: Brenda Scott Royce
Publisher: New American Library
ISBN: 978-0-451-22126-1
Release Date: August 2007
Genre/Sub-genre: Romantic Comedy
Year/Setting: Current/New York and Hollywood
Overall Rating: 4.0
Sexual Content Rating: Subtle
Language (Profanity/Slang) Rating: None
Violent Content Rating: None
Marliss's Website:
www.brendascottroyce.com
Let’s see which is the stranger image for the reader’s mind—a woman taking Lamaze who isn’t pregnant or a woman whose rear-end is sticking out of a hold in the wall in an apartment building hallway. Either way you go, these are some of the events in Holly Heckerling’s life. Things aren’t exactly going the way they should be for this young New Yorker. Her comedy act has died, things with her boyfriend aren’t going exactly according to plan because he doesn’t seem to be able to separate himself from his ex-wife, her family is strange to say the least and her financial picture has gotten pretty grim.
Maybe heading to Hollywood in order to be the birthing coach for her best friend, Carter, is just the ticket to get away from all of the chaos of her life. Now Carter just also happens to be married to Holly’s old comedy partner, Danny, who is now into acting and has a spot in a new sitcom coming out. He asks Holly to visit the set with him and her strange life just got a little bit stranger.
When Holly points out some of the animal issues going on within the set as they works with snakes, monkeys and so on, she soon finds herself employed. (There current trainer is arrested for smuggling illegal animals.) Is this her new dream or …
Brenda Scott Royce is an incredibly clever writer and possesses an innate ability to create the imagery in the reader’s mind using her words. The characters are humorous and yet have hidden depth to them. I have to admit that there were many times during the book that if I were Holly I would be seriously considering hari-kari.
The book flows well from scene to scene and the secondary characters do a fairly good job of not getting in the way of the main ones. There were just a few cases where it happened but the comedy was running so fast that it really didn’t hurt anything.
Brenda Scott Royce has hit another one out of the park with the humor that is the life of Holly in Monkey Star. Keep it coming, Brenda!
Lori
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