A review by msmandrake
Night Night, Sleep Tight: A Novel of Suspense by Hallie Ephron

2.0

I'll be generous and give this two stars since I read it mostly in the middle of the night while unable to sleep due to having thrown out my back, so I might possibly have felt more kindly towards it if I read it in under more pleasant circumstances. I had plucked it off the new books shelf of the library because it is written by Nora Ephron's sister. (which could also have played a tiny role in getting it published in the first place). This book is very...simple? If I was a creative writing teacher I would have said, good effort. Meaning it was competent, no blaring errors (although remember it was the middle of the night, I could have missed something). But the characters are pretty run of the mill,some bordering on cliche, no sentences will be reread with wonder at how she could put those words together so beautifully ("Deirdre took a deep breath." Next page "Deirdre took a deep shuddering breath.") The story starts out as a rip-off of the Lana Turner/Johnny Stompanado/Cheryl Crane mess with a fictional movie star (I've always hated fictional movie stars, I have no idea why) I didn't guess the ending, but there weren't many clues and a number of Oh I'm sure moments getting there. And there was a Perfect Man for our heroine at the end, of course there was.

(one plus...it takes place in 1985 Los Angeles, and since I live there I appreciated some of the old place references, like CC Brown's on Hollywood Blvd, they DID serve their sundaes in cold metal dishes and bring you extra hot fudge. But that is a reasonably obscure "plus", I know.)