From Publishers Weekly
Collins (Hollywood Wives; Hollywood Husbands) grabs fans with a no-holds-barred (and no subtlety shown) surefire bestseller spun around the disaffected children of Hollywood moguls. Tired of club-hopping and sexual flings, 24-year-old Jordanna Levitt is immobilized by ennui when a massive fight with her father-a famed producer married to a woman younger than his daughter-forces her out of her cushy nest. She lands a gofer job with Bobby Rush, the hot-ticket son of an ungracefully aging movie star, then quickly makes her mark as an actress. Her best friend Cheryl Landers deigns to try working, too, and becomes a successful Hollywood madam. On the periphery are Grant Lemon Jr., the dissolute son of a celluloid icon; anorectic Marjory Sanderson, the whiny, daughter of a TV magnate; and Zane Ricca, a movie-star wannabe and Mafia boss's nephew jailed for seven years for murdering a young actress and now stalking the women who testified against him. Collins festoons her pulp sundae with dollops of hot sex in cars, beds and driveways; Fatal Attraction-like trysts between stars and a cascade of trademark names. Overlapping plot lines are propelled by rude energy and blazing tabloid-style tales of suicide, substance abuse, towering egos, dubious parentage and truly star-crossed lovers. 500,000 first printing; major ad/promo; audio rights to Simon & Schuster; Literary Guild main selection. Author tour. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Originally scheduled for April (see Prepub Alert, LJ 12/93), this novel will now be published in September.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
You have to hand it to Collins. Her writing is banal, and her characters are cartoons, but her books are always page-turners. Using her familiar Tinseltown setting, Collins, who has already covered Hollywood Wives and Hollywood Husbands, now takes a look at the sons and daughters of the stars and starmakers, young people who like their drugs mellow and their sex hot (though dutifully strapping on condoms on every other page). You can only go so far with Hollywood kids, though, forcing Collins to throw in a few other characters: the alcoholic cop with the heart of gold (10K, anyway); the serious journalist who nevertheless has long blond hair and legs that won't quit; the Jack Nicholson-like, laid-back legend; and the serial killer whose story line knits the rest of the cast together. So how can something so bad be so good? Like another Jackie, Jackie Susanne, Collins knows how to write a trash story that's larger than life and keep it moving at a breakneck clip, never giving us time to feel guilty for enjoying the ride. Still, Collins has pretty much squeezed the California orange and probably should try moving the action to another coast. Even she couldn't do much with Hollywood Pets. Ilene Cooper
From Kirkus Reviews
Egomaniacs in fast cars, Armani-clad spoiled rich kids, their movie mogul parents, ``lavishly appointed'' Tinseltown homes, and always-sensational sex--it's Collins romping on her well-trodden but ever-fertile ground. Jordanna Levitt and her pals--precocious, underachieving children of the movie industry's most important and dysfunctional families--are known as ``The Hollywood Five.'' Jordanna is a slut without ambition, Marjorie Sanderson is suicidal, Shep Worth is in the closet, Grant Lennon and Cheryl Landers operate a call girl operation. When she's bounced from the mansion of her producer dad and his pregnant, younger-than-she-is new wife, Jordanna takes a job as the assistant (and later costar) of ``incredibly good- looking'' movie star/director Bobby Rush, the child of a brilliant but cruel famous actor. Their devastating physical attractions and broken homes make the two kindred spirits, but Jordanna's got a problem that even a top Bel Air psychotherapist couldn't solve: She's being hunted by a madman against whom she testified at his trial for murder. Luckily for her, handsome Brooklyn cop Michael Scorsinni has just relocated to L.A. He and a top-notch celebrity reporter for Style Wars, the gorgeous and down-to-earth Kennedy Chase, team up to stop the crime (as well as grapple with their own lives' melodramas) and in so doing, fall in love. All this races in front of a backdrop of superlatives: the hottest clubs, the harshest drugs, the seamiest sex, the meanest mafia, and the prettiest posers. The Hollywood Kids are palimpsests upon which are listed the traumas of the trust fund; Michael and Kennedy are cut from the ``beautiful but damaged'' cloth; supporting characters (the black cop buddy, the lusty Latina newscaster) are straight from Central Casting. Plot, though suspenseful, offers few surprises. Still, it's a Porscheload of fun. It's logical: Hollywood Wives and Hollywood Husbands breed Less Than 9 Zero 210 offspring. (First printing of 500,000; Literary Guild main selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description
Wherever there's money and glamour, trouble can't be too far behind. In Hollywood Kids Jackie Collins takes her readers back to the Hollywood Hills for another absorbing page-turner of sex, ambition, and deadly revenge.
At the novel's core is the Hollywood Five, a clique of jaded twenty-somethings whose parents (all major players) thought that child-rearing ended with naming their offspring after themselves. Jordanna Levitt is the wildly beautiful daughter of a powerful producer and legendary movie star mother. Even though she flaunts a coltish bad-girl image, Jordanna yearns for more than lounging behind the velvet ropes in chi-chi clubs and existing on a diet of Midnight Cowboys. Jordanna's best friend, Cheryl Landers, is a sassy, leggy redhead, who is equally idle. Cheryl fills her days doing lunch and buying up Rodeo Drive until a Hollywood Madam asks her to mind shop while she's out of town. Pandering to the rich and famous goes so smoothly that she can't resist turning a trick herself. Grant Lennon, Jr., the son of the last generation's wildly handsome icon, is a junior agent at International Artists Agents. Not satisfied with the number of starlets he can get on his own, he agrees to "test-run" women for Cheryl's fledgling entrepreneurial venture for a fee. Marjory Sanderson is a dreamy-eyed head case. Barely recovered from anorexia, she invents one phobia fast on the heels of the last one in order to keep her television magnate father's attention. Shep Worth, the effeminately beautiful son of a sex-symbol mother, who won't publicly acknowledge her age, is a man who won't publicly acknowledge his alternative sexual preference.
"The group had grown up together, sharing the experience of too much too soon," Collins writes. When you've got your family's great looks, and you're always driving next year's hottest sportscar, and work isn't necessary because you've got a wallet filled with the sky's-the-limit credit cards -- why fight it?
These Hollywood kids have been given everything money can buy except a raison d'être. Though their attitudes are large enough to fill any room, these offspring of privilege are all desperately trying to figure out what to do with themselves. However, life among the rich means life among the damned. A recently released psycho-killer, erotically propelled by blood-lust, is determined to wreak havoc and revenge on the kids' lives.
Interwoven into this central drama are the strong stories of a supporting cast of characters: Michael Scorsinni, the street-smart ex-NYPD detective who is doomed to traverse the country until he finds his kidnapped daughter; Bobby Rush, the ambitious and talented actor/producer, who only has his Hollywood Royalty lineage working against him; Kennedy Chase, the blonde and brilliant young widow and journalist who puts the pieces together before the cops and felicitously learns in the process that she's still capable of falling in love; Luca Carlotti, the dandy mob kingpin with the cobra's smile and a weakness for classy call-girls; and finally there's Charlie Dollar, the stoned movie-star savant, perpetually on the prowl for women to fulfill his fantasy of a polygamous idyll.
Not since best-selling superstar Jackie Collins created Hollywood Wives, the book which established a whole new standard for novels of the American dream in the extreme, has she dealt so incisively and so revealingly with tinseltown, and with the people who live and die there. Jackie Collins is back doing what she does best, chronicling the lives of the rich, famous and infamous with devastating accuracy. Hollywood Kids is Jackie Collins at her suspenseful roller coaster ride best.
About the Author
There have been many imitators, but only Jackie Collins can tell you what really goes on in the fastest lane of all -- from Beverly Hills bedrooms to the raunchy streets of Hollywood.
With 200 million copies of her books sold in more than 40 countries, Jackie Collins is one of the world's top-selling writers. In a series of controversial bestsellers, she has blown the lid off Hollywood life and loves. "I write about real people in disguise," she says. "If anything, my characters are toned down -- the truth is much more bizarre." Jackie's sixteen bestselling novels have never been out of print, and all have been New York Times bestsellers. Now comes Thrill!, a high suspense story of sex, lust, relationships, fame, violence and terror. Her heroine is a beautiful movie star -- classy and untouchable, who hooks up with a handsome stud -- irresistible to women. Then there's her ex-husband. His ex-lovers. A fifteen year old wild child. An obsessed fan. And all the secrets in the world... Jackie Collins started writing as a teenager, making up steamy stories her schoolmates paid to devour. Her first book, The World Is Full of Married Men became a sensational bestseller because Of its open sexuality and the way it dealt honestly with the double standard. After that came The Stud, Sinners, The Love Killers, The World Is Full of Divorced Women, The Bitch, Lovers and Gamblers, Chances, and then the international sensation, Hollywood Wives -- a number one New York Times bestseller, which was made into one of ABC's highest rated miniseries starring Anthony Hopkins and Candice Bergen. The Stud, The World Is Full of Married Men, and The Bitch were also filmed -- this time for the big screen. And Jackie wrote an original movie, Yesterday's Hero, starring Ian McShane and Suzanne Somers. Readers couldn't wait to race through Lucky, her next book -- a sequel to Chances -- and the story of an incredibly beautiful, strong woman, another New York Times number one. Then came the bad boys of Hollywood in the steamy Hollywood Husbands -- a novel which kept everyone guessing the identities of the true-to-life Hollywood characters. Jackie then wrote Rock Star -- the story of three rock superstars and their rise to the top, followed by the long-awaited sequel to Chances and Lucky -- Lady BOSS -- tracking the further adventures of the wild and powerful Lucky Santangelo as she takes control of a Hollywood studio. Both Lucky and Chances were written and adapted for television by Jackie, who also executive produced the highly successful six-hour miniseries Lucky/Chances, starring Nicollette Sheridan, Sandra Bullock and Grant Show. In 1992 she produced and wrote the four-hour miniseries, Lady Boss, which became another huge ratings success for
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