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Ghoulish, Bookshop

Synopsis:

FAME. FORTUNE. JELLYFISH.

When an aspiring young actress accepts an invite to a fading A-lister’s home, she soon learns the terrifying secrets of the Hollywood Elite.

Review:

I was catching up on episodes of the This Is Horror podcast, and toward the end of last year, Danger Slater was a guest. In his interview, he talks about his books, his life, and trying every type of Kit Kat bar. By the end of this interview, I had bought both Starlet and Moonfellows. Earlier this week I read Starlet in one sitting, and I immediately knew that Danger Slater is an author that I now have need to read everything he writes.

Starlet stars with Deja Seawright, an aspiring Hollywood actress from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, struggling to get jobs but continuing to audition every day. She runs into Brandon Bowers at pizza place. He was once a famous A list actor who had started to fade a long time ago. Brandon and Deja start a texting relationship while he is filming on location, and on his first night back in Los Angeles, she is invited over for what might the last night of her life.

Danger Slater has written a body horror novel that is funny, fast paced, and entertaining. At the core of the story are the tropes of the girl who is trying to make it to stardom and the actor who will do anything to stay relevant, but his telling is so far removed from what other authors would do with the same prompt that it almost feels like he is the first person to write about this. One of the things that makes this work the most is that Slater never takes the story or the writing too seriously. He uses jokes and weirdness throughout so that when the real jokes and weirdness happens, we are already conditioned to believe them. This causes Starlet to be a success even when it could be the most bonkers story that I read this year.

Starlet is inspired by the allegations against Armie Hammer, but Slater goes far beyond the cannibalism fantasies that Hammer was accused of sharing in Instagram DMs. Slater uses this only as the genesis of the idea, and the things that Brandon Bowers does makes Hammer’s ideas seem almost normal. I enjoyed this novella from beginning to end, and all of the twists and turns made sense in a nonsensical way, proof that Danger Slater knows how to come up with a crazy story and execute it in a way that makes it all believable.