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.  

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.