Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?

I'm drawn to stories about movies/Hollywood (both old and modern day) so I was excited to pick this up, and there was definitely a lot to like here. But mmmmmm I feel like...this would have functioned better as a more straightforward historical fiction without the intergenerational present day aspect? Like most readers are going to pretty quickly gather that Kitty was their secret grandma... so why make it a ~big reveal~ toward the end?

Also I just found Kitty's Old Hollywood storyline much more compelling than the present day St James sisters. Like I understand the parallels being drawn between Kitty needing to pass as White to succeed and Elise needing to delete her Black Lives Matter social media post but also like, IDK, did we need all 3 sisters and and also the publicists and also the boyfriends? A lot going on that didn't necessarily all contribute!

The thing I was maybe most interested in was the concept of the Blair House secret society for Black women passing as white to secretly help each other and help darker skinned women too, and I did some googles to see if that was a real thing and it seems like no? Or if there was...it's still secret? Anyway I would have loved a book that focused more on that and dropped the present day stuff?

Anyway...I'll keep an eye out and see what Crystal Smith Paul writes next because I think there's some good stuff in here but it's maybe a little too much packed into one debut novel?