Anne Brooke: fiction writer

A curious novel, this one. It starts off very sharply indeed, but Cannie isn't at this point the strongest of heroines - in fact she does get rather wimpy after a while. However it's perfectly realistic until about half way through when she suddenly ends up being a total success in Hollywood. What??!!! The Hollywood sections are actually very poorly written and it's cliche after cliche, sadly. At this point, the book was heading rapidly downhill to a 2 star rating, whereas before it had hovered somewhere between 3 and even 4 stars.

Honestly, it's as if Weiner left the building and someone else - possibly her cat? - was writing this section for her. I can't really think of any other explanation … However, fear not, as all is not lost - the end sections when Cannie returns from pesky Hollywood (hurrah!) are just great and the ending and the eventual love interest are very good indeed.

As a result, it gains a 3 star rating, but no higher due to that soggy middle. It needed a far more talented editor, but it's interesting work.