Half Hollywood, half horror story.

When an aspiring actress is offered a very well paid job at the home of Hollywood royalty, she thinks the connections and the salary might well shift her career from stalled to stellar. But all too soon, in the rarefied air of a half-decrepit mansion in the hills, reality rapidly becomes a slippery concept...for the reader as well as the protagonist. Think drugstore gothic novel with a side of LSD.

It’s a frenetic but completely readable stream of consciousness, shifting between two minds: one dark, desperate, haunted while the other is clear-eyed and calculating, willing to fake almost any persona if it get her close to people who might help her acting career. The Santa Ana winds are a living part of the landscape, the arid pulse of the early narrative is made more ominous by its association with the classic noir opening about those winds making meek wives finger the kitchen knives while staring at their husband's neck.

Suspense builds slowly at first. Anya deals daily with dysfunctional family, casual racism, and a desperate hunt for acting jobs while, in the background, on the news, in cafes, mentions are stacking up about a so-called summer of exsanguination, of people murdered and people missing, amid jokes about how, if you were sufficiently famous or rich, you could kill someone at a party and the LAPD, even if present, would not take you in, much less charge you. And then there's Jude, the dynastic descendant she's charged with minding. Is he delusional, or outright demonic?

For a book set among the flighty and famous of Hollywood, this exploration of evil versus – not exactly good, but possibly neutral – is surprisingly deep. But definitely intriguing. Sure to send a chill up your spine..

#ThanksNetgalley #Horror #Hollywood #Dreamland #demonic #GoodOrEvil #history #LosAngeles #HollywoodHills #mansion #gothic #actor #OnTheMake #SetUp #trapped #danger #DangerousTimes #DangerousMan #dating