Book Review: A Starlet's Secret to a Sensational Afterlife, by Kendall Kulper (2023)

The terrific cover for A Starlet's Secret to a Sensational Afterlife, by Kendall Kulper, 2023.

Author Kendall Kulper

Kendall Kulper’s 2022 young adult novel Murder for the Modern Girl was one of my favorite books of 2022, so I was excited to hear that her next novel was coming out in 2023. A Starlet’s Secret to a Sensational Afterlife follows Henrietta Newhouse, the younger sister of Ruby, the protagonist of Murder for the Modern Girl. The year is 1934, and thanks to a beauty contest, Henrietta has won a screen test in Hollywood.  

Once Henrietta gets to Hollywood, she quickly finds out that her screen test was a scam. But she happens to make friends with Miriam, a young actress at Silver Wing Studios. While Henrietta is at Silver Wing Studios visiting Miriam, she impresses the head of the studio, who quickly gives her a real screen test. Henrietta’s partner for her screen test is Declan, a stunt man who has no interest in becoming an actor.  

The chapters of A Starlet’s Secret to a Sensational Afterlife alternate narrators, between Henrietta and Declan. As the reader quickly learns, Declan has a superpower: he cannot be injured. Thus, he’s the perfect stuntman. However, he goes to great lengths to keep people from finding out about his superpower, which means that he’s not really benefiting very much from it.  

Silver Wing Studios decides that even though Declan isn’t much of an actor, there’s one role that he would be perfect for: Henrietta’s boyfriend. In a studio-managed publicity campaign, Henrietta and Declan have photoshoots together, attend premieres, and do other studio-approved activities together. Declan and Henrietta don’t actually like each other, but that’s not a concern for the studio.  

Things seem to be going swimmingly in Henrietta’s career, although she hasn’t seen Miriam in a while, and then suddenly Henrietta starts having vivid visions of young women who are dead. I’ll leave the plot summary there, but suffice it to say that A Starlet’s Secret to a Sensational Afterlife dispels the notion that the Hollywood dream factory was a perfect place.  

In the novel, Henrietta won a beauty contest sponsored by Woodbury soap. In real life, Woodbury soap did sponsor beauty contests, and one of the judges for their beauty contests was F. Scott Fitzgerald. As a Fitzgerald fan, I really appreciated this Easter egg.  

I really enjoyed the Hollywood setting of A Starlet’s Secret to a Sensational Afterlife, and if you like young adult historical fiction, you should give it a read.