These women are ambitious and nurturing, competitive and sensitive - they both love and hate each other.

Most importantly, she manages the glamour without sacrificing the humanity of her female characters. With her knack for sensory detail, Shukert skillfully conjures everything from the bright prison of Republican debutante balls to the back roads of the Dust Bowl to the manicured lawns of wealthy asylums - all while keeping the glittering artifice of Hollywood front and center. My annotated notes in Starstruck include a lot of awestruck emoticons and doodled hearts - and some cat stickers to mark good passages when I didn't have a pen - and, of course, over and over, the hastily scrawled exclamation: 'That's a lot of scotch!' because, true enough to 1930s Hollywood, Shukert's male characters seem always to be drinking. You've got Margaret Frobisher-turned-Margo Sterling, the sweet former debutante struggling to feel something after a life of charm school Gabby Preston, the tiny and increasingly drug-addicted stage veteran and Amanda Farraday, formerly Ginger-the-Sex-Worker, the street-wise-sex-pot, who only wears black, knows her sex appeal, and puts most of her acting chops toward being 'a good girl' for the man she wants to have sex with. These women have very different personality types.

Set in 1930s Hollywood, Starstruck follows three teenage starlets orbiting fame.

Starstruck by rachel shukert