The Runaway Actress by Victoria Connelly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Connie Gordon gets sick of the pressures of Hollywood stardom and runs away to her mother’s home town and HQ of her fan club – a remote village in Scotland. Maggie runs the Connie Gordon fan club as well as the only shop in the village. There’s a playwright called Alastair who has also run away from London to live in a house in the middle of the hills.
Although there are two love stories in the book, the real story was about Maggie and Connie. The men are almost incidental. Victoria Connelly is very good at natural sounding dialogue. From the start, the Scottish characters sound Scottish, without resorting to clichéd bits of dialect. The various residents of the village have distinct voices and the interaction between them is very funny.
I would have given it five stars, but I found some of the false trails in the plot a little annoying. For example, the reporter who is conveniently scared away and the agent who is angry at being fired, but didn’t tell the press where Connie was. The ending seemed a little flat. Overall, it was an enjoyable story and well worth reading to hear the villagers talking to each other.
Rhoda Baxter 