A Dollar Short: The Bottom Dollar Girls Go Hollywood (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It isn't every day a movie star steals your husband..." (more)
Key Phrases: Cayboo Creek, Janie-Lynn Lauren, Miss Beezle (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The latest in Gillespie's lighthearted Bottom Dollar Girls series (after Bet Your Bottom Dollar), set again in the small town of Cayboo Creek, S.C., chronicles how Chiffon Amber Butrell finds the inner strength with the help of her friends to stand up to rather than stand by her man. Chiffon has never had much money, but her wayward husband, Lonnie; three children; and Bottom Dollar Emporium friends Elizabeth, Mavis and Attalee enrich her life. When Lonnie is cast as an extra in a Janie-Lynn Lauren movie, he apparently abandons his family for the star. A distraught Chiffon hurts her ankle, loses her waitressing job, is accosted by paparazzi and finds her failing marriage splashed all over the tabloids. Gillespie alternates Chiffon's story with that of her older sister, Chenille, a never-married 40-year-old who moves back to Cayboo Creek when she loses her teaching job. While some readers may enjoy Gillespie's down-home humor (Attalee's spicy Southern maxims), some of the episodes (e.g., Chiffon fends off reporters with water guns) are too cute to believe. The novel's predictable ending aims for empowerment: Chiffon grows a backbone, Chenille finds love and Janie-Lynn wins an Oscar but still cries for Lonnie.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Those plain-speaking, cheeky Bottom Dollar gals (Bet Your Bottom Dollar, 2004) return with more rollicking adventures in Cayboo Creek, South Carolina. When Chiffon's husband falls for a Hollywood temptress, Chenille chooses the wrong man, and the senior center threatens to go belly-up, only Attalee, Mavis, and Elizabeth can concoct a solution. Smitten in California, Lonnie isn't around when his own beauty queen, Chiffon, loses her job, breaks her leg, and winds up with lovelorn sister Chenille (and her hypochondriac dog, Walter) cooking up carob cookies in her kitchen. Meanwhile the Bottom Dollar gang's "nudie calendar" fundraiser has the local Baptists riled and ranting. Will Lonnie come back? Will Chenille find true love? Will the Bottom Dollar Girls make a nickel in the nude? The gentle fans of the Miss Julia series by Ann B. Ross (Miss Julia's School of Beauty, 2005) will welcome this raucous southern spoof. Never a dull moment, despite repeated cliches and silly chapter headers ("Metaphors be with you"), this fast-paced screamer of a romance begs a giggle, if not a guffaw. Jennifer Baker
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Number Line 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 edition (August 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743250117
• ISBN-13: 978-0743250115
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,231,985 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fiesty small-town girls, August 16, 2005

By	Karen Potts (Lake Jackson, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Bottom Dollar Girls are back and better than ever. In this second book of the series, Chiffon's philandering husband Lonnie goes to California to be a movie extra and falls for the leading lady. The tabloids have a field-day reporting all of the details of their romance, while Chiffon loses her job, sprains her ankle, and tries to hold things together on the home front. Although Chiffon and her sister Chenille are not close, Chenille has also lost her job and she comes back to Cayboo Creek to help out her sister. Although their relationship is rocky at first, the sisters overcome their past animosities and stand together in the face of their over-critical mother and men who try to take advantage of them. The humorous sayings at the beginning of each chapter are worth the price of the book, and feel-good story is loaded with Southern humor and charm.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fine look at modern small rural southern community life, July 27, 2005

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In Cayboo Creek, South Carolina, Wagon Wheel waitress Chiffon Butrell wins a video store's Be-a-Movie-Star contest, but cannot go to Hollywood because her baby is ill. Instead her handsome husband Lonnie heads west where he meets actress Janie-Lynn Lauren and forgets his wife and three kids back home.

Chiffon loses her job and she cannot pay her bills because Lonnie has had his paycheck sent to California. Her friends want to help, but they are distracted with other matters. Elizabeth is about to give birth and the remaining Bottom Dollar Girls sisterhood are busy raising money for the Cayboo Creek Senior Center. Chiffon turns to her estranged sister Chenille to help her with her crisis accentuated by the media descending on Cayboo Creek like vultures seeking dirt on Lonnie.

The sequel to the BOTTOM DOLLAR GIRLS, A DOLLAR SHORT is a fine look at modern life in a small rural southern community invaded by the outside world. The story line is amusing as the Bottom Dollar sisterhood goes about protecting their own, but also serious with the serious subplot of Lonnie abandoning his children besides his wife. Readers will appreciate this regional slice of life tale especially when the barbarian horde assaults the townsfolk who treat the outsiders like parasites that need special handling. This is one contemporary that is not A DOLLAR SHORT of fun.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love the bottom dollar girls!, June 27, 2006

By	Tonya Speelman "Hoarder of books" (Goldendale WA) - See all my reviews

Who wouldn't love these books? Full of hilarious moments, you will read it one sitting. We have two sisters who haven't had the best relationship. When Chiffon wins a trip to Hollywood, she has purchased a new Kmart outfit, all ready to go. At the last minute, her youngest has a fever, and so she tells her husband to go ahead. Her husband Lonnie hasn't always treated her right, cheating on her and taking advantage of her. She finds out from the TV of all places that her husband is shacking up with Jay-Li. The media gets ahold of this story and has a field day with it. Chenille, Chiffon's sister, has never married and is a school teacher. Her teaching assistant thinks she has the green light to help discipline the children, wields a plastic machete, to scare the children. Chenille has been let go from her job because the assistant said she told her to do whatever was necessary to keep the children in line. Well Chiffon is stuck with her and Lonnie's three children, and has an accident in the grocery store after seeing tabloids with Lonnie and Jay-Li all over, spraining her ankle. Their mother is going to Europe and asks Chenille to assist Chiffon. Together they tackle the world, each ending up a little richer in love and life. I can't wait for the next one to come out.