Customer Reviews

Just This Once

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Having read every word Jacqueline Susann has ever written, when I stumbled across "Just This Once" by Scott French, I had to pick it up and read it to see what he/his computer had accomplished. The book starts out well enough, and is very reminicent of Susann's style, but the closer you get to the end the more it begins to fall apart and the more you begin to wonder if a computer really wrote any of it.
When I finished the book, which I did quickly because he does capture Jacqui's page turnability, my first inclination was to find out more about the process involved in the writing of it. After doing a bit of research and thinking back on the book more, I came to the conclusion that it was just a thinly veiled retelling of "Valley of the Dolls" with much less thought out characters. Any credibility the book earned itself in the first 230 pages is destroyed with the final scene and final line from which the book gets it's title. It immediately reminds you that no, this is not on par with Susann by a long shot.
Whether French or the computer wrote the book, I have to say at this point I am kind of glad it didn't go anywhere as it seems to cheapen the memory of the queen of page turning summer reading. If you are looking for a bit of diversion that will make you sigh and remember the excitement of reading Susann I would recommend this book though. Just keep it in line with the likes of "Delores" or "Yargo" or even "Shadow of the Dolls".