Jackie Collins – Drop Dead Beautiful

The sixth book in the Lucky Santangelo series, published June 26, 2007.
Genre: contemporary romance / glamour romance
Cover: my book has the smaller cover, and it is fun.



Like mother, like daughter. No truer words for Lucky Santangelo’s sixteen-year-old Max, who goes looking for trouble when she hooks up with some guy she meets on the internet. Soon the beautiful, wilful Max finds herself in deeper waters than she can imagine as she becomes a pawn in a greater scheme that leads back to Lucky and Billy Melina, the studly moviestar boyfriend of Lucky’s best friend, superstar Venus.
If Max’s troubles weren’t enough, Lucky has her multi-billion-dollar Las Vegas hotel complex to contend with… along with Anthony Bonar, the illegitimate grandson of her one-time godfather Enzio Bonnatti. So begins a non-stop thrill ride as Lucky builds her dream resort –and gambles with all she holds dear. Max, too, is following her dreams, and as her high-flying triumphs prove, she’s more than just a little Lucky.


I used to love Jackie Collins books in my late teens, and I am quite happy to have rediscovered that love. I had no trouble at all to get caught back up in Lucky Santangelo’s life. She is one of my favourite heroines of all times, right after Skye O’Malley.
She is still madly in love with her famous screen play writer husband Lenny Golden, and they have 2 children, Bobby the son of her late husband Dimitri Stanislopoulos, and Max, who is their daughter. And Max sure is a handful. As independent as Lucky used to be in her own youth, and determined to make and get her own way in life. She is really headstrong and stubborn and reckless. Her two best friends are into drugs but she doesn’t like it much. But to get back at her boyfriend who dumped her for some other girl, she decides to just hook up with a guy and have sex with him, to make the ex-boyfriend jealous.

What she doesn’t know is that the gorgeous and sweet boy she thinks she is going to spend the weekend with, is an older man with a grudge against her mother. And she will be his perfect revenge. Lucky will be furious with her for missing her grandfather Dino’s birthday party, but he is so old and he smells funny. She wants to have fun!

Then there are Lucky’s best friend Venus and her young boyfriend and actor Billy Medina. Billy’s best friend doesn’t like Venus much, and that is mutual. So to tempt Billy, his friend keeps taking floozies back to their house, and asking Billy to go out with him instead of spending time with Venus. And Billy is not really all that good at resisting temptation … or the needling remarks of his friend.
With Billy standing her up at the last moment, Venus is feeling more and more needy, and she wants to know for sure that he is not cheating at her, as her previous famous husband did. Has she really fallen in love with him?

Enzio Bonnatti’s widow is still looking for revenge on Lucky for killing her husband, and her grandson will have to help her with that …


An action filled book, and I loved every page of it. It was fun hanging out with these characters again, catching up with Lucky and her busy life. She is a great heroine, always busy with one project or another, this time building the most luxurious hotel / casino in Las Vegas, being a wife and mother and friend. She loves her father Gino dearly and that shows, and is mutual. Gino sure hasn’t changed much from his own wild childhood and business years, even though he is kind of retired now with his wife Paige.

Action, drama, love, sex, danger and a good ending make this book and this series a joy to read. I love the glamour, reading about the lives of the rich and famous, the movie stars, the mobsters and other movers and shakers in Hollywood and Las Vegas and Los Angeles. A world you can dream about without really wanting to be a part of it.
Bring on the next one!

9 stars.

© 2015 Reviews by Aurian