This book began with a whirlwind of glitz and glamor. Vivian is young and naïve and brought into this amazing new life in 1940s New York City, the whole first ~60% was light and fizzy, was very entertaining if also unrelatable and barely believable. I thought bringing in Edna the actress was a interesting perspective to read about and I was very intrigued to see how Vivian would grow with this mentor figure. And though Vivian talked about being good at sewing and talked about various outfits people wore, I would have liked a little bit more detail about the process of creating costumes and Vivian's attachment to this craft.

My biggest issue overall with this book was the structure and pacing. The first half of the book was less than one year in New York City and then Vivian has to leave New York City and the rest of the book is the rest of her life. By the time she gets around to explaining who the letter writer Angela's father is, we're in the final 100 pages of the book and I felt that this character was completely random and while from an important day in Vivian's life but he had very little impact on me. I did not care about who this guy was and felt that Vivan should have been over this traumatic day from her past/reacted differently to him at this point years later?

At 19% progress I noted that I felt entertained and engaged with the audiobook but was wondering about where the plot was heading and felt rather middle of the road about it. At 44%, I was a little annoyed with the lack of acknowledgment and addressing of the heavier topics including heavy drinking and partying and seemingly minimal discussion and almost a brush off of the World War II events that had already been happening. At 61% progress I was enthralled with the plot and action happening at that point especially a big speech that is made to Vivian-- really packed a punch!

I sort of wish that this book had been from multiple perspectives, I would have loved to have read more about Aunt Peg and her life and her lovers including Olive, and also a little bit more about the woman that Vivian runs her wedding dress shop with and how they basically were co-parenting her child. I felt that having so many years of Vivian's life be condensed down into relatively few number of pages was a disservice to her character growth, and some of the life lessons that she earned along the way were lost.

After reading some other reviews, I saw many complaints that this book was too long and had too much sex and was boring, but I also saw positive comments about how much sex there was, as well as feeling that this book was glamorous, amazing and glitzy. I didn't necessarily feel that it was too long I just felt that it was unbalanced and uneven with its structure and pacing. I didn't really understand why Vivian would tell Angela hundreds of pages of her young sexual exploits and leave relatively few pages to address her actual question about her father? I read that the author wanted to demonstrate a lot of sex positivity and show that women could want sex and be sexual people without that being immoral, and I feel that that was accomplished but then it almost feels like the rest of the book was constructed as an afterthought around that topic? Ultimately I thought it was interesting that Vivian went down a different life path and had this unconventional love story and gathered this found family around her, it's just too bad that that was the shorter and less detailed part of the book.