Customer Reviews

Diamonds to Dust: The Life and Death of Jayne Mansfield

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Being a Jayne Mansfield fan I really wanted to love this book but I couldn't get past all the errors. I don't mind that it was self-published but the author or somebody needed to do a little more checking before sending it off to the printers. If I'm going to spend $20 I don't want to get page after page of typos. The photos look terrible and most of them were taken when Jayne wasn't looking her best. I know they are rare but again they are not worth the cost. The content of the book is mostly a fluff piece about Jayne's tragic life and career. That's fine for a web site but this is supposed to be a biography. I wish Jayne's beautiful (and very talented) daughter Mariska or one of her sons would put together a more professional looking tribute to Jayne with photos of her at her peak.

This was one of the worst books I've ever read. The author barely has a grasp on the English language, so it's hard to muddle through all the spelling errors - and there are quite a few! An elementary school student could have written a book report on Jayne, had it published, and it would have been better than this drivel.
If you can get past all of the grammatical erros, you have a "story" slapped together very sloppily that isn't even in any sort of chronological order. With every page, I became more and more frustrated with this book.
Save your money - there has got to be a better Jayne bio out there than this.

The book has some interesting pionts. It actually clears up a lot of stories which didn't really make sense in past biographies. Unfortuatly there are may mispellings and grammtical errors that make it hard to enjoy. It is like most of Jayne mansfields movies full of promise, but they fall short. I own all of her biographies; this one I sold right away. I was sorry I bought it. Hopefully one day someone will write a really interesting and accurate biography about Jayne.

I just received this book and I am very pleased with many aspects of it. It is very obviously a loving tribute to the memory of a remarkable, and all too often, forgotten and underappreciated woman. I appreciate Frank's honesty in telling her story and accepting her for the very human person she was, faults and all. I also found myself satisfied to read that he feels she and Marilyn Monroe did NOT have all that much in common, which I have always felt is true. You don't have to look any farther than the way that they looked, performed, and felt about life. The only reason that I am not able to give this book a full 5 stars is due to the blatant and numerous errors in tense, spelling, punctuation, and grammar throughout the book. I found it amazingly distracting.

Otherwise, it is a must have for the true Jayne Mansfield fan. And as the true Mansfield fans know, the previous books have always left one with the inclination that something was missing. Frank has helped add a piece or two to the story.

This book contains a lot of really interesting information about Jayne Mansfield. However, it seems to me that no one actually edited this book; the grammar and syntax are awful!

I would recommend the book for those wanting to learn more about Mansfield's life, but if poor writing irks you (as it does me), just be fair-warned that reading this not-so-well-written book will probably bother you a bit!

While I can appreciate and understand that this was self-published and written by a fan, it was so riddled with spelling errors and misplaced punctuation that it was hard to focus on the actual story being told. The writing was extremely amateurish and several sentences were written so awkwardly that I had to re-read a few times to understand what was being said. I read this book in about an hour - it really just quickly summarized and glossed over Jayne's life. I didn't get a real feel for who she was or what she was all about. The author also sprinkled in his opinions in places that seemed unnecessary. As for the photos, they were few and the quality was very poor. This book overall felt like a fan's website had been printed out and bound. I would only recommend it to a die-hard Jayne fan that wants to have every book ever written on her in their collection. Otherwise, definitely skip this. It was highly disappointing and not worth the cost.

I am not surprised this was self published because the writing is awful! From the grammar to the poorly reproduced photos it's just a bad book.

This book was such a let down. I understand the author is a huge Mansfield fan - this 'book' feels more like a school assignment or possibly a magazine article. I also could not believe that a book would be published with spelling mistakes. I read it in 30 minutes. On top of that the photos in the centre of the book are printed on the same paper as the actual book (alas no glossy photo insert here) - all the photos are black & white and on some pages there is a tiny little thumbnail picture with a caption and the rest of the page is blank.
Hopefully a good bio will come out one day.

I agree with the previous reviewer,the bad reviews are not accurate. Obviously written by some nasty,miserable person. I found this book a great,fact filled, easy read! Yes, there are some punctuation errors, but so what??????? There are lots of facts about Jayne, many i didnt know, and I am related to her! The pics are not the best quality pics, but ones I've never seen. On the whole, this was a VERY worthwhile book to read on the forgotten Legend of Jayne Mansfield!A VERY special woman, who should never be forgotten! Well worth the money I paid for it, and a must for any Mansfield fan! Reviewers, Please have a Heart! Frank did a great job on his first effort.

If you want to read whats in this book, simply go to [...]..then read the bio section...its exactly the same word for word its as if he copied and pasted it to make a book. i read the book in 2 hours.