God has nothing on Valdes-Rodriguez--she created her first novel in a mere six days! Touted as the Hispanic counterpart to Terry McMillan by handlers eager to cash in on demographics! Proud possessor of a legendary temper and deeply resentful of ethnic stereotypes that nonetheless made her a fortune! (The Dirty Girls Social Club, 2003, made the New York Times bestseller list and was optioned by Jennifer Lopez's production company!) Now comes Valdes-Rodriguez's second, set in Los Angeles, where Dallas-born Alexis manages a popular Mexican band called Los Chimpances del Norte and dreams of bigger things. Marcella, half-Dominican, half-French, and raised in Santa Barbara, is a gorgeous actress tired of playing whores and maids and still hoping for her big break. Olivia Flores, survivor of a childhood Salvadoran death-squad attack, lives in the racially mixed neighborhood of Echo Park and wonders whether she's raising her young son right. Her philandering husband seems to have lost interest, perhaps thanks to Olivia's dowdy appearance and Frida Kahlo-esque intensity. Burning question: Will Hollywood ever buy Olivia's dramatic screenplay about El Salvador? Hell, no. Alexis has no luck convincing the powerful pinheads who rule movieland, but Marcella scratches up the cash to get the script produced via a financial connection with her creepy, child-porn-loving uncle--and chica, everything changes in a few implausible seconds. Looks like the threesome has the world on a string at last--but tragedy awaits! Alexis's true love, Goyo, a Cuban-born music star, is shot! The culprit: a disgruntled journalist dumped by Alexis earlier in the story. Despite his whitey-white name and skin, Daniel Mehegan is a ridiculous wannabe who affects gangsta-pimp-hip-hop-star ways and walks while he cooks up a bogus tale of drug smuggling that implicates Alexis. Happy ending, though. Valdes-Rodriguez lays on the irony with a trowel and makes the same points repeatedly: people with Spanish surnames come from different places (and they hate to be called Hispanic), American racism is endemic, and clueless white people never get the slang right. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The Latinas in this Dirty Girls Social Club are trying to make it in Hollywood. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Three very different Latina women vow to bring Los Angeles to its collective knees in this funny, guilty pleasure of a novel, which bears some resemblance to its author's previous hit, The Dirty Girls Social Club. Dallas-born talent agent Alexis Lopez is trying to break her fellow Meximericans, a band called Los Chimpances del Norte, into the big-time spotlight, but she's also looking for new blood. Enter Marcella Gauthier Bosch, a half-French bad-girl actress, once a star of Spanish-language soap operas and now aching for a mainstream movie career that doesn't involve being cast as a maid or a hooker. All she needs is a serious, Latina-focused script-and that's where Olivia Reyes comes in. The shy, dowdy stay-at-home mom is still traumatized by the memory of seeing her father gunned down by Salvadoran soldiers. But she also has a serious, autobiographical screenplay, and Alexis convinces her to let Alexis show it around-with the idea that Marcella will be perfect as Soledad, Olivia's mother. Complications abound, of course-there's Olivia's cheating husband, Marcella's disdain for men in general and a Cuban rap star who seems determined to break Alexis's heart-but so do the laughs. There's Alexis's middle-aged white ex-boyfriend who thinks he's a teenage gangsta, Marcella's latent-goth suitor and the good ol' hard-drinking, beer-gutted, coke-addled Mexican boys of Los Chimpances del Norte. While the action is slow and the novel repetitive in places-Alexis turns whining about her small breasts into an art form-this is a funny, heartfelt piece of escapism, Latina-style. Agent, Leslie Daniels. (On sale Sept. 7) Forecast: With an eight-city author tour, national publicity and a 250,000-copy first printing, there'll be no sophomore slump here. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved