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** spoiler alert ** There is a lot to like about this book. It has some great settings and Hollywood heyday really fizzes off the page, the overall story arc was good and the way the two stories came together at the end was neatly done and I found the characters credible and meaty. All the side characters played a good role and didn't feel like set dressing.

There is also, however, a lot to dislike about this book.

The fractured timeline was...just kind of annoying.

Diane taking the wrap for the kid shooting Ray was the stupidist idea ever. I know it was heat of the moment: but really? THAT'S your idea? Even the most incompetent and idiotic lawyer in Hollywood could have gotten her off for self defence. She must have come out of that fight with two black eyes, a concussion and a face like a California sunset. The police turn up and find a beat up woman and a scared kid (who would be traumatised) and they decide that she shot him in cold blood? Wow.

Secondly, I know Tom's mother (sister) ends up in the chair and he feels a lot of residual guilt. But growing up on a ranch in Montana with a chilled native American dude who sounds like he is a total bad ass and then manages to do enough in school to just go: sod it, creative writing, that's where the big bucks are and finishes university and writes a book that is successful enough that he can pay the legal fees to save his piece-of-s**t son from a court martial? Tom, it sounds like you got over it. Except you didn't. Whaaat?

So, Danny gets off and then tells his dad: oh, fyi, I killed a bunch of women and kids because our humvees got blown up and some friends got hurt in Iraq and so I decided to get revenge. Dad be like: don't worry about it, it's all good, we're a happy family again. Danny: great, I want to study again and have some kids. Dad: Swell. W the actual F.

Tom is super sad because his idiot of a mother (sister) died for a crime he commited to save her getting the living daylights beaten out of her but is totally cool his son killing a bunch of civilians, committing a war crime, lying under oath, using his girlfriend as a pregnancy prop and not talking to his dad for ten years because he thought that they should have a talk about him joining the military to fight a war most people understood at the time to be both pointless and unnecessary?