Valley of the Dolls was sexy, shocking, and unrelenting in its revelations of the dangers facing women who dare to chase their most glamorous dreams. It shot to the top of the bestseller lists in 1966 and made Jacqueline Susann a superstar. It remains the quintessential big, blockbuster, must-read, can't- put-down bestseller. Before her death in 1974, Susann spent many months working on a draft for a sequel that continued the stories of Anne Welles, Neely O'Hara, and Lyon Burke. Now, after thirty years, the perfect writer has been found to turn Susann's deliciously ambitious ideas into a novel that matches the original shock for shock and thrill for thrill. In Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls, Rae Lawrence picks up the story in the late '80s and brings it right into the next century. Long a devoted "Valley" girl herself, Rae has re-imagined the original characters in a contemporary reality (and adjusted their ages just a bit), exactly as Jackie would have wanted her to. And if you've never read Valley of the Dolls, no matter. Sometimes the present is even more surprising and fun when you don't remember the past. And what a story! Neely's golden voice has brought her fame and success, but now she craves acceptance in social circles where her kind of success means nothing at all. Anne, born and bred in those very circles, must choos between returning home or pursuing a fabulous television career - and the kind of passion she once knew with Lyon. And Lyon, who loses everything including Anne, looks for happiness in the most unexpected of places. Taking us behind the closed doors of New York, East Hampton, and Los Angeles, whetting our appetites for more with a new generation of young women and men who grow up far too fast, and spicing the whole story with a generous sprinkling of sex, drugs, and cosmetic surgery, Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls is the ultimate beach read for our time. But feel free to devour it any time of the year, wherever you are. It's been a long time since readers had this much fun between the covers. It's time to jump back in.
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"I worried this wouldn't be as good as Valley of the Dolls but it was. In an updated version. They brought the characters into the 80's but kept them the age they were where Dolls left off."
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Stephanie (4 out of 5 stars)