By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: We may have dreams of our favorite celebrities. Sometimes we visualize them falling in love with us and sweeping us off our feet. We may also visualize being best friends with them, spending all night talking about our latest troubles to them. This is especially true of fans of the Golden Age of
Hollywood who see the works of Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, or Humphrey Bogart or others. These older actors had an allure of unapproachable glamour but often played similar characters so often that their fans feel like they know them because they know that character. Lucy Holliday captures those glamorous fantasies in her novel, A Night In With Audrey Hepburn in which a lovelorn failed actress encounters the ghost of her favorite Hollywood Golden Age film star, Audrey Hepburn.
Libby Lomax, an English woman, is the type of out of luck female that often stars in humorous chick lits. She recently lost her job playing an alien extra in a science-fiction tv show after she accidentally sets her alien costume on fire. But not before she catches the eye of the show's hunky star, Dillon O'Hara much to his jealous girlfriend's dismay. She also feels out of place with her stage mom agent mother and her attractive scenery chewing actress sister, Cassandra. So, Libby is a woman who needs a lot of help already before Audrey Hepburn appears on her Chesterfield sofa.
Hepburn is written with the charm and grace of her beloved characters such as Sabrina Fairchild from Sabrina and Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's. She is enthusiastic about this new modern world and its inventions such as Libby's espresso maker which amuses Libby. She also grows to love online shopping and Twitter much to Libby's chagrin. (She even sets up her own Twitter account #LittleBlackDressAndPearls) She gives the book the spunk and elfin charm that Hepburn was known for and steals just about every scene that she's in.
She also is fond of giving Libby some solid advice. When Libby talks about her absent father, Hepburn also relates about her own absent father who later was revealed to be a Nazi sympathizer (actual biographical information). She chastises Libby for her shyness and her somewhat plain appearance suggesting that she become more stylish (hence the online shopping). She also encourages to follow her heart and take chances with the men in her life, such as Dillon. Libby's encounters with Hepburn are the highlight of the book.
Unfortunately, Hepburn's passages with Libby completely overshadow the book that the rest of the book pales in comparison with them. There are many chapters where Libby encounters many of the people in her life, particularly her annoying mother and sister and self-centered father, as well as her friends. They are funny and usually involve comedies of errors such as when Libby steps outside of a sauna in nothing but a towel and ends up in an embarrassing Twitter video.
Most of Libby's encounters with the other people in the book are cute, but fluffy. You know that there are going to turn out well despite her embarrassment. Even the book's attempts at seriousness such as discussing Libby's relationship with her distant father end up being non-events (though they do give Libby some much needed Girl Power as she realizes that she could never change her father and not to even bother anymore.)
But there isn't much sparkle to them as there is in the passages with Audrey Hepburn. In fact in the pages without her, this Reader kept hoping that Audrey would show up just to slap some sense into Libby or at least give her a stern but very spunky talking-to. Audrey Hepburn overshadows the book so much that everyone else just seems to be filler.
Some plot points get mentioned but are left dangling such as Libby having a male friend who appears to like her beyond friendship and there seems to be some connection between Audrey Hepburn in life and Libby's Chesterfield sofa that is never fully explained. Holliday wrote two other books in the series which feature Libby's encounters with Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly so this book no doubt sets up the others to follow. At the very least they should be interesting for the Golden Age of Hollywood stars. Maybe the rest of Holliday's writing could catch up to them.
This looks so fun❤️❤️
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