It Happened One Fight
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15
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Average rating3
From Entertainment Weekly writer Maureen Lee Lenker comes a swoony romantic comedy set in the world of 1930s film. Joan Davis is a movie star, and a damned good actor, too. Unfortunately, Hollywood only seems to care when she stars alongside Dash Howard, Tinseltown's favorite leading man and a perpetual thorn in Joan's side. She's sick of his hotshot attitude, his never-ending attempts to get a rise out of her—especially after the night he sold her out to the press on a studio-arranged date. She'll turn her career around without him. She's engaged to Hollywood's next rising star, after all, and preparing to make the film that could finally get her taken seriously. Then, a bombshell drops: thanks to one of his on-set pranks gone wrong, Dash and Joan are legally married. Reputation on the line, Joan agrees to star alongside Dash one last time and move production to Reno, where divorce is legal after a six-week residency. But between on-set shenanigans, fishing competitions at Lake Tahoe, and intimate moments leaked to the press, Joan begins to see another side to the man she thought she had all figured out, and it becomes harder and harder to convince the public—and herself—that her marriage to Dash is the joke it started out as.
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As a classic film lover, I was excited about the premise with this one but the execution fell flat. I will agree with other reviewers and say it read like fanfiction. I almost did not finish, which is rare for me, but instead I skimmed a good chunk of the book.
What I really wanted was a screwball comedy like IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934) or, even better, HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940), or I would have even loved something like THE GAY DIVORCEE (1934), but instead I got a melodrama like TEDDY AT THE THROTTLE (1917) but way too long and without the awesome dog who saves the day in the end.
Unfortunately most of the problems were in the writing. The plot was lackluster and poorly paced. The writing had too much telling and not enough showing, and then everything that was told was repeated over and over again. (Dash believes he's unloveable! Dash believes he's unloveable!) The characters were melodramatic and unlikeable. And despite the author's note at the end, it still felt too modern, not because of content but because of the people within the story's perception of the content. Also, the research really didn't shine and I felt a tad insulted at the comparisons made in the end. (The character Joan Davis did not come off anything like Barbara Stanwyk!) Plus, (spoiler alert) everyone gets an Oscar in the end?
If anyone has better suggestions of novels that invoke Old Hollywood I would love them, because I really love that setting, but this one I would not recommend.
