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.  

Best Books I Read in 2022

The best books I read in 2022. This collage took me way too long to make.

I read 25 books in 2022, meeting my Goodreads goal on the nose. I read some excellent books this year. Clicking on the links will take you to my full review of that book. 

Unscripted, by Nicole Kronzer, 2020. An excellent YA novel that follows Zelda as she navigates the toxic masculinity of an improv comedy camp. Kronzer gives us vibrant portraits of a fun cast of characters as she examines what it means to be a trailblazer. 

The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, 1920. A biting portrait of Gilded Age New York society, Wharton’s protagonist is the romantic Newland Archer. Newland’s romanticism is directly in conflict with the society around him. A beautiful and haunting work of art.  

I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, by Sylvie Simmons, 2012 (updated edition 2021). Leonard Cohen’s music may be something of an acquired taste, but I’ve long been fascinated by Cohen’s music and poetry. Sylvie Simmons does a terrific job of examining Cohen’s life and art and painting a portrait of this complex man.  

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, 1989. I read many books of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories this year, including all of his original collections. Of Fitzgerald’s original collections, I might pick All the Sad Young Men as my favorite, for the beautiful, gut-wrenching punch of “The Rich Boy,” “Winter Dreams,” “Absolution,” and “’The Sensible Thing.’” The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald is a career-spanning compendium that puts forth a compelling argument for the beauty and continued relevance of Fitzgerald’s writing. Fitzgerald was a writer blessed with a remarkable gift: the ability to write perceptively about his own time, and yet his writing transcends his own time as his words echo down the generations to us all these years later. In every story, no matter how contrived the plots may sometimes be, there are sentences and phrases that will take your breath away and will remind you of the power and beauty of the written word. 

The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming, 2020. A YA biography of “the Lone Eagle,” this is a fantastic portrait of a complicated and flawed individual. Fleming does a superb job of leading us through Lindbergh’s life-often using quotes from Lindbergh’s own writing, as well as the writings of his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. This book also led me to two other excellent books I read this year, both by Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Gift from the Sea, and North to the Orient, an account of Charles and Anne’s 1931 flights on which she was his co-pilot and radio operator.  

We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story, by Simu Liu, 2022. Liu, known for his ground-breaking role as Shang-Chi, and for the Canadian sitcom Kim’s Convenience, wrote a superb book about his parents’ immigrating from China to Canada in the 1990’s, and his own upbringing. Much more than a typical celebrity memoir, We Were Dreamers is an excellent examination of what it means to be the child of immigrants.  

Losing Mum and Pup (2009) and Has Anyone Seen My Toes? (2022) both by Christopher Buckley. Losing Mum and Pup is Buckley’s memoir about the deaths of his parents, just 10 months apart. It is a book both deeply funny and deeply moving. I lost my own Pup in December of 2021 and listening to Buckley reading the audiobook of Losing Mum and Pup was a way of revisiting some of my own memories about my Dad. Buckley’s most recent book is the very funny Has Anyone Seen My Toes? A novel set during the current pandemic, Buckley successfully echoes the rhythms of life during that strange time. And someone really needs to take inspiration from Buckley and start a fast-food chain called Hippo King.  

Lefty & Tim: How Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver Became Baseball’s Best Battery, by William C. Kashatus, 2022. Steve Carlton is my favorite baseball player, so I have to put this dual biography of Carlton and his “designated catcher” Tim McCarver on this list. Kashatus does a fantastic job of examining how Steve Carlton became one of the greatest pitchers ever, winning 329 games, 4 Cy Young Awards, and striking out 4,136 batters.  

Murder for the Modern Girl, by Kendall Kulper, 2022. A YA historical novel set in 1928 Chicago, Murder features main characters who can read minds and shape shift. Kulper successfully embeds these fantastical elements within a vivid and realistic portrait of Prohibition-era Chicago. My friend Katharine Woodman-Maynard recommended Murder for the Modern Girl to me, and I’m very glad she did. Katharine did a fantastic graphic novel adaptation of The Great Gatsby, so she knows I’m a sucker for the Jazz Age.  

Book Review: Murder for the Modern Girl, by Kendall Kulper (2022)

 

The cover of Murder for the Modern Girl, by Kendall Kulper, 2022.

Author Kendall Kulper

Kendall Kulper’s YA novel Murder for the Modern Girl is set in 1928 Chicago. The two main characters, Ruby Newhouse and Guy Rosewood, both have powers they are trying to keep hidden. Ruby may look and act like a typical flapper, interested in speedy boys, hot jazz, and dancing the Charleston, but look out Jack, because she can take one gander at you and peep right into your dreambox! She can read minds! And you wouldn’t give bland Guy a second look, even if you saw him working as a janitor in the county morgue. But if you did happen to give him another glance, Guy might not look the same, as he can change faces and shapes!  

Murder for the Modern Girl takes these fantastic elements and embeds them firmly in a real-world setting that is vibrantly described by Kulper. Ruby’s father is the Cook County state’s attorney, so she has a powerful sense of justice imbedded in her. Ruby has been using her gift of reading minds to discover truly awful people who are plotting nefarious crimes. Ruby then poisons them before they can commit these crimes. This reminded me a little of the futuristic world of the movie Minority Report, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, where people can be arrested for “pre-crimes” before the crimes are actually committed. Most of the crimes Ruby prevents are acts of violence against women. The murders that Ruby commits are usually classified as simply alcohol poisonings and are quickly forgotten. But when Guy figures out that Ruby’s most recent victim was poisoned, an overzealous coroner tells Guy to start digging through other mysterious deaths in the city.  

The novel is told in chapters that alternate from Ruby’s point of view and Guy’s. It’s an effective technique, and Kulper successfully captures their different voices. I found Murder for the Modern Girl to be a fun and suspenseful read, and the themes that Kulper focuses on are thought-provoking. If you’re looking for an excellent YA historical novel, you should check out Murder for the Modern Girl.