Marlene

This book is dripping with glitz, glamour, sex, seduction and opulence. Under all that, though, is family, modern love, and war. The plot follows Marlene Dietrich (a real actress born in 1901) as she goes from awkward pre-teen (with a crush on a female teacher) to world-famous actress.

Marlene was super entertaining. I found myself getting really wrapped up in what was going to happen next in her life. The book is separated into acts and chapters. Each act is a number of years in Marlene's life, and the book encompasses much of her life. Born and raised in Germany, World War II plays a significant role in the lives of Marlene and her family members and friends.

I really haven't read a book like this one before, and I admit that I really liked the glitz and glamour. The story was enthralling and the characters were well done, but I did think that the book started to get really quite long around halfway through. Smooshing such an interesting life into 400 pages is no doubt a challenge, and I think Gortner did what he could to put all of the facts from Marlene's life into a tantalizing story. However, I just started to feel like there was far too much crammed into this story. It was a ridiculously ambitious attempt at capturing Marlene's entire life into one book, and it was really enjoyable, but the huge cast of characters and Marlene's entire life was too huge of an undertaking for one novel, in my opinion.

Read my full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/12/review-marlene-c-w-gortner/