Hollywood Scent

by Nick Winters

[Jeff Sexton]

Creepy Gothic Hollywood Glitz. First things first - I'm writing this review *years* after I read the dang book, because I just saw that apparently when Winters *finally* released it long after I read it as a very early ARC, I never came back and wrote a review for it. Indeed, it was while writing another review for a February 2022 release - A Lullaby For Witches by Hester Fox - that I made the connection to this book due to their blends of historical and modern fiction via witchcraft (and in particular, ghost witches)... and then realized I had never reviewed this book. :D

ANYWAY... this book really will stick with you, long after you thought you had long forgotten about it. It does a phenomenal job of showing Golden Age Hollywood glitz as well as a more modern look at Hollywood... and it gets creepy early and never really lets up. The finale here is particularly well done and particularly memorable, and really the fact that I could very easily spoil large sections of this book in a discussion even so many years and literally thousands of books later... that should tell you how well crafted this story is and just how much it will crawl into your brain like few others. Very much recommended.