Starlit Book

Starlit is a 2010 novel, by Lisa Rinna best known to daytime soap opera viewers as Billie Reed on Days of Our Lives, her stint on Melrose Place or as host of the defunct SoapNet show, SoapTalk. She's also been a competitor on Dancing with the Stars, had her own reality show, and appeared in various television movies. This entry has plot references and spoilers for the book, so if you don't want to know, don't continue reading it.

The novel is a modern take of a “rags to riches” story set in Hollywood by someone who works in television. It focuses mainly on a woman named Tally, who ends up being a star of a prime time soap opera named Dana Point and eventually segues into feature films. She has two friends named Sadie and Mandy. The three of them took acting classes together from a man named Randall. We met them on Oscar night, as they were working as catering waiters. On that fateful night, Tally met two men who would change her life, Gabriel and Mac. Tally was at the right place at the right time, and with talent and luck she got a great career.

The villainess of this piece is a woman named Susie, who was the star of Dana Point. She blackmailed her boss, to be able to leave the program to do a movie. Then she was such a terror that she was fired from that job and due to the blackmail was able to get back on Dana Point. In the mean time, Tally had become the star of the program and eclipsed Susie's popularity. Susie was angry and set out to destroy Tally's life. She was successful short term, but eventually Tally was able to get back everything she lost.

Sadie and Mandy had a different sort of life in Los Angeles. Sadie ended up working for an agent named Josh, as he found his phone and asked for a job as his assistant. They ended up having a romance that ended tragically. After being berated for her lack of skills at acting class, Mandy got breast implants, and then a career in adult entertainment. She was successful in that genre, found a guy who was not a performer, and was happy. Even though the lives of all three women became incompatible, they remained friends and helped each other through the hard times.

This book reminded me of one of those romance novels that were made into television movies or miniseries, back in the day. Some of the love scenes were very racy, and featured scenes of both love and lust. I was able to pick the novel up in hard cover for a lot off the publishers’ price and enjoyed it for an afternoon read as it is around 250 pages.