*Glamorous Notions* takes you into the world of old Hollywood, following Lena, a talented costumer trying to keep her life together amidst love, fame, and a past that won’t let her go. The story is full of glitz, gossip, and a bit of mystery, making it a fun and immersive read. While I enjoyed the setting and the characters, the pace slowed down a bit for me at times, but overall, it's a solid peek behind the curtain of Hollywood’s golden age.

I loved this historical novel by Megan Chance, set in 1950s Hollywood with all the movie glitz and glam of the time. Lena Taylor is a movie costume designer during the Red Scare in Hollywood where anyone that was different from the norm of the time was scrutinized as a potential communist threat to America. Lena has managed to remain under the radar until she is soon moved from assistant to the famous boss Flavio and is now his replacement. As all Lenaś dreams begin to come true she becomes a target for the gossip columns and the CIA. Lena has been hiding some secrets of her own that are now threatening her new successful life. This book also has thriller elements which kept me from putting it down. I loved the twists along the way and the ending of the book was done so well, I did not predict it and it was perfect!
Megan Chance has written a wonderfully descriptive novel of old Hollywood I could picture the people and the clothing of the time. This book made me want to explore more of the history of how Hollywood was affected by McCarthyism. I cant wait to read more of her books.

Megan Chance’s best yet! A taut, tension-filled story about a young, ambitious costume designer navigating the glamour and shifting loyalties of midcentury Hollywood amid the Red Scare, the Hays Code, and suspicions of espionage.

The tension ratchets up page by page as Chance’s characters dance perilously close to the edge of unwitting destruction. Glamorous Notions will have you considering the complexities of good and evil in this novel of hidden motives and secret identities, spiked with California sunshine, lunchtime martinis, and celebrity gossip. Brilliant storytelling!

I loved that this book was set in the Old Hollywood McCarthy Era, adding an atmospheric tension. Hollywood Glamour and Espionage made this an intriguing and enticing read filled with complex and interesting characters. By forcing Elsie/Lena's character to re-invent herself and break her way into the Hollywood scene brought an empowering and inspirational side to the character, she was raw and her perspectives of the industry gave insight to the world that she'd found herself in. The book is well researched and developed and creates a tense narrative filled with lies and deception set against the glamour of Hollywood.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Glamorous Notions by Megan Chance is a third person-POV historical novel set in Hollywood and Italy during the Red Scare. Elsie is married to Walter, an aspiring actor, and supports her husband’s dreams while getting nothing in return and is constantly belittled for having aspirations in fashion. When Harvey and Charlie, two radicals and romantic partners, help her get a spot at a prestigious fashion academy, Elsie does more than leave her husband—she becomes Lena, a fashion designer with no ties to Walter at all.

The Red Scare is one of those time periods that really highlights the extreme lengths people will go out of fear, radicalism, and xenophobia and how those three things mix together to make a hostile environment ripe for people to abuse to bring down rivals. Lena certainly has people jealous of her career and even more rooting for her downfall, digging into her past to find whatever they can to hurt her. What a lot of those people don’t know is that Lena was escaping a dead end marriage and a former partner who had been using her for years and would continue to do so if he had the chance. In that way, it does connect back to the modern age and how we sometimes tear people down without ever thinking about what else might be going on in their lives and forgetting their humanity. The Red Scare could happen again and we might not know it has come until it’s too late.

Roughly the first 25% is Lena when she’s living as Elsie, her meeting Harvey and Charlie, and then her time in Italy, where she meets Julia. The rest of the book is the aftermath of a man winding up dead after she meets him and Lena trying to run from her past. There is something borderline Queer going on between Lena and Julia, with Lena admitting to herself that she has never been happier than when she was with Julia and drawing attention to the way they behave does make people think they are lovers. As far as the amount of detail the text goes into, Julia and Lena were only ever friends, but I can’t help but think either something was going on between them or there was sexual tension under the surface that they just needed a bit more of a push to explore.

There is a lot of history in the text regarding Hollywood, costume making, communists, jazz, the relationship between the former Soviet Union and jazz, and more. I was aware of many of the jazz clubs banning Black people from visiting, but I had no idea that the USSR banned jazz from being played because they thought it was overly decadent. Glamorous Notions feels very well-researched and I appreciated how Lena’s story keeps being connected back to the suspicion that she is a communist or an agent of the USSR because so many were constantly living under the fear that they would be accused and having careers destroyed. It felt real.

I would recommend this to fans of novels set during the Cold War with a focus on the Red Scare, readers looking for a historical novel with a lead who becomes slowly more and more paranoid, and those looking for a story about a woman making something of herself after leaving a bad marriage

4 stars!!
this was a great book to read to help me come out of a slight reading slump/ when i had a desire to fly through a book, which i haven't done in a month or so. i was instantly hooked into the story from the first pages and just wanted to keep reading until we got to the last page and all of the mystery was solved. highly recommend as a fast paced read that will keep you interested until the end.
yes, at times i was wondering when our main character Lena would stop being QUITE so naive, but nothing that kept me from wanting to continue reading.
CONTAINS: new identities, costume design, Rome, secrets, 1950s Hollywood glamour

Elsie is a naive young girl from Ohio, but she has talent and ambition and makes her way to Hollywood with her husband, wannabe actor Walter. Elsie makes new friends and gets to go to fashion college, then to Rome, where she gets embroiled with the mysterious Julia. Events overtake Elsie and she is deported from Italy.
Back in Hollywood, she reinvents herself, and starts a new life with a good job and a new boyfriend, but her past catches up with her.
I liked Elsie/Lena, she is just trying to get on with her life, but people are drawn to her, and they are not always good for her. The background of the Hollywood era of the infamous gossip columnists was good.
Recommended.

Had to DNF this book around 36%. Repetitive and not holding my attention. The continual use of the word “communist” and the retelling of what happened in the square in Italy. Needs a heavy handed editor.

Good writing and compellingly told.

(I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

In 1955 Hollywood, Lena Taylor, the renowned costume designer for Lux Pictures, hides a dark secret. Once known as Elsie Gruner, a small-town Ohio girl, she escaped a dangerous past in Rome. Now, as her engagement to a rising screenwriter threatens to expose her carefully constructed life, Lena must confront the ghosts of her past and the sinister truth that has haunted her for years.

I really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes of the Hollywood costume department and all of the intrigue Elsie went through to become, and stay, Lena.

Thank you to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I read an eARC of this book on NetGalley so thank you to the author and publisher.

I love a book set in golden age Hollywood! We follow an ambitious woman who longs for a more exciting life than where she grew up on her parent’s pig farm. She marries a man she quickly realises she doesn’t particularly care for or respect in order to get out of her hometown. They move to Hollywood and she realises Walter is holding her back, getting angry at her for working even though she’s trying to support them. When she gets the opportunity to study to become a costume designer but is told no and she better pick up more shifts waitressing to pay for the husband to take acting lessons she thinks enough is enough. She leaves but doesn’t officially divorce him. She decides she’ll let nothing stand in her way and will take every opportunity she can. This leads her to Italy and to interactions she doesn’t fully grasp that could lead to trouble. Returning to Hollywood, her star rises but her past will soon catch up with her.

This takes place in an era of great suspicion and censorship. We see frustrations over rampant changes to film scripts, costumes that ruin the intention of the creators. We see great danger and surveillance and mistrust. We have a main character who has made some poor choices that are catching up with her. Towards the end, the amount of things that reared up felt a little overwhelming and too much and I wasn’t sure how the author was going to pull everything back together when it was almost feeling farcical, however they achieved it very cleverly.

This was a fascinating historical novel, with a real sense of danger and a beautiful setting. An ambitious main character and I loved reading about all the costume design and beautiful outfits!

Glamorous Notions tackles the McCarthy era in the glamorous world of Old Hollywood.

What I liked about the novel: I liked that the main character, Elsie, was a determined, raw talent in the world of fashion design and I enjoyed her perspective as a costume designer for a major studio. I also found her stint as a student in Rome and her pull into the subversive post-war underworld there an interesting aspect of her story. Over the course of the book I equal parts believed her naivete and felt frustrated by it, so much so that by the end of the story it was hard for me to believe that she emerged as the most savvy character of them all who had outfoxed everyone involved in the climax of the story. My favorite characters in the novel were the friends that changed the course of her life—Harvey and Charlie. I would have liked to have read their stories and known more about them.

Glamorous Notions packs a lot of disparate parts into one well-researched novel. I am not sure it all came together for me, but I do appreciate the author’s hard work with this ambitious book.

Kudos also to the cover artist for such a stunning cover.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have a passion for fashion, and the historical aspect of this book, combined with the fashion made for a very enjoyable read of a genre I would love to read more of. Thank you Megan Chance and NetGalley for the ARC.

“Glamorous Notions” by Megan Chance is a fictional book based upon “the red scare” after WWII. In this book, the reader follows Elise Gruner, a woman married to a wanna-be actor who is a pool hustler. Elise has costume design talent and through some friends ends up going to a school in Rome. In Rome, Elise meets a classmate who asks Elise to do some little odd jobs for her. Elise regards these odd jobs as “games,” not knowing that something bigger is going on. Elise is literally escorted out of Rome and told to not return. Elise re-invents herself as Lena Taylor and through some luck and some hard work, she becomes a costume designer for a movie studio. Then things all come to a head - the husband returns, the classmate returns, and Elise/Lina is in danger of losing her job and possibly her freedom. This story was not what I expected - maybe it was that fabulous cover that seemed to hint about a lot of Hollywood costume designing? But I think that Elise/Lina was a bit too naive - there’s naive and then there’s purposefully ignorant (or maybe not putting pieces together when they’re laid out for you). I loved the LA friends Harvey and Charlie - and I liked their combination of wisdom and caution but also their love for Elise throughout the book. For me, this book rather lay there - I read it, but it felt more like a story for a show than a story to read. I did, though, find the Author’s note to be interesting - and I did like the Epilogue (and was glad to read that Lena didn’t let down her old friend). A reluctant three stars from me - this had the potential to be a four star read, but something (for me) was just off.

My first Megan Chance novel and it was a lovely surprise. A historical novel set behind the scenes in Hollywood? That's all I needed to get into the story.

Elsie Gruner, from Ohio, would do anything to leave her family farm for Los Angeles, its stars and its glitter. She meets Walter Maynard, whom she soon marries. Still young and naive, he promises her that he will become a great actor. Elsie soon realised that he was selling her a dream and left him. She wants to live her Hollywood dream and become a fashion designer. She managed to get into one of the leading fashion schools, which then sent her to Rome on a training course.

Once there, in Europe, her life changed. She met Julia Keane, who transformed her into the sumptuous Lena Taylor. At the same time, Lena is running mysterious errands for her friend. Her Italian escapade ends in murder. Lena is forced to flee and returns to Los Angeles where, through perseverance, she becomes one of Hollywood's leading fashion designers. But her past and the secrets she tries to keep buried will resurface.

A Hollywood historical novel set against a backdrop of Russian espionage and American censors, in a world at the height of the Cold War.

I love this kind of historical novel and was sure I would enjoy the story. It's true that sometimes I'm afraid I'll get bored, that the stories will be the same. But not at all.

I really liked the author's fluid writing style, and it was easy to immerse myself in the story. It was impossible to stop reading. I could see what was going to happen at times, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the story.

The characters are complex; there are those you like and others you'd like to get rid of. But that's also what makes this story so charming.

In short, a very good discovery.

Desperate to escape small town American, Elsie marrys a hustler. On the move towards LA and the movie lifestyle. Eventually she realises the limits of Walters skills and leaves.
Making her own decisions and opportunities leads to travel.
Mixing with other people, new experiences and naviety leads to a return to LA.
Reinventing herself again the glamorous expectations come to fruition but at a cost.
The cold war at its height and the move studio system.

Meh, Reminded me of Edith Head, costume designer back in the big Hollywood days. Sadly, this title really wasn't my jam at all, skimmed a lot of it. Others might get something from the time period & look at the studio system, etc. Appreciate being given the DRC by Net Galley & the publisher

I've always been captivated by Old Hollywood in all its forms. Megan Chance weaves us a tale of old Hollywood glamour, lies, espionage, McCarthy-ism and blacklists. I found this book so intriguing and a great read.

I really liked Lena's character, re-inventing herself from scratch to become one of the top movie costumers in Hollywood, all the while trying to balance a past that she doesn't want found out and a future she wants to embrace. As she climbs higher on the fashion ladder, the more in the spotlight she shines (in a positive and at times a negative way) and soon that light is shining on a past that doesn't seem to want to stay buried. When a part of her past enters into her future, she will do everything she can to protect her secrets!

This story is gripping, with twists and turns, suspense and of course fashion. There's intrigue and danger from Lena's past in Rome where a web of deception and lies not to mention murder follows her across the pond to the glitz and glamour of LA and threatens to take down the carefully built new life that she has created. Will she be able to keep the life that she loves and the person that she has become?

I have received a free copy of Glamorous Notions by Megan Chance from NetGalley and here is my voluntary review. Glamorous Notions has it all, building yourself from the scratch, friendship, love, good old Hollywood, fancy dresses and shadows in every corner. Lena is a costumer in Hollywood. She seems to have it all, just like the novel, a good job, a heart warming love, and her great talent, in Hollywood. She also has gossip columns talking about her, not in a way that she would like and her past hangs above her all the time. With the hunt going on in Hollywood, Hedda Hopper's sharp eyes and shaky relations of Los Angeles, would she be able to hold on to her façade? Thanks NetGalley and Megan Chance for giving me a free copy so I could read this well researched novel. Wish I could see the costumes written in the novel!

Although I wasn't entirely gripped by this read it is a pacy novel and the glanour of Hollywood had me interested.

Lena is a character I didn't know wether to love or hate but her rise to fame and the murder mystery was well written and the plot unfolded beautifully.

This was a book that I p[icked up and put down, it didn't quite draw me in but I enjoyed my reading time ..