ParaNormalRomance.org

"Sophisticated mainstream novel"

In 1938 Chicago, Eve Handel is engaged to marry Arthur Burdsey who she met four years ago as he was entering Northwestern. However, co-owners of Pad-Dar movie studio Peter Padron and John Darius invite Eve to come out to California to work for them. Though a difficult decision for a single young woman, Eve ends her engagement and journeys to Hollywood.

Over the next three plus decades, Eve evolves into a major player in the movie industry as her ability to find talent is uncanny. Many individuals from different walks of the Hollywood life turn to Eve with their worries and darkest confidences, knowing she will never reveal what she learned and will provide needed solace. However, in 1972 Eve lies in a Los Angeles hospital with what at first appears to be a heart attack. Many of the people she has assisted over the years wish for Eve's speedy recovery for different reasons. Some want it out of love and respect for someone who has always provided a safety net for the industry's workers. Others fear that the rumored journal that Eve allegedly maintained over the years will rock the community if it lands in the wrong hands and secrets are revealed.

This reviewer expected to invoke the fifty-page rule on THE DREAM FACTORY, but instead was pleasantly surprised by a well-written novel that provides entertaining insight into thirty plus years of Hollywood. The story line will remind readers of Jackie Collins' Hollywood Wives novels though much less spicy and titillating. Renowned actress Janet Leigh leaves the audience guessing who the characters are actually based on, but no exposes in this engaging bit of fluff.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted January 26, 2002

It was a time when Hollywood studios were at their most powerful, when stars were discovered and crafted into national idols and the motion picture dream factory was in full swing. And at the center of it all was one woman -- a woman who knew all the secrets.

Eve Handel was someone who always knew what she wanted. Raised in a middle-class Chicago family, she and her siblings were encouraged to express their opinions, to follow their dreams. For Eve, that dream was Hollywood.

At twenty, Eve was on the brink of choosing another path, the more traditional one of wife and homemaker. But when an unexpected opportunity dropped out of the blue, Eve broke off her engagement to the man she'd loved for years to follow her dream to Hollywood.

Hired by Utopia Studios to find talented actors and build them into stars, Eve quickly became one of the most powerful women in an industry run by men. And as Eve influenced the careers of many Hollywood stars, her uncanny ability to listen made her their confidante. And Hollywood's elite freely unloaded their secrets -- and scandals -- on Eve.

Now after a sudden illness Eve lies in a hospital bed. As her life hangs in the balance, those closest to her are torn between their concern for Eve and their own repudiations. Because Eve Handel kept a journal -- a journal containing truths that could jeopardize careers and ruin lives.

From Janet Leigh, one of Hollywood's insiders, comes a novel about the power of secrets in a town built on illusions.