Love on the D List, by J.R. Barker

[Ulysses]

Love on the D List
By J.R. Barker
Published by the author, 2023
Five stars

Right away the plot of this book gets confusing—and it’s no accident. The two central characters, William Chapman and James Young, are both confused right from the start, and the author uses this confusion to build tension, and emotional attachment, throughout the book. There is also a lot of humor here, and I laughed out loud more than I expected to.

William is the son of “Hollywood royalty,” but his career tanked right after his Golden Globe win when he was nineteen years old. James—who we learn about sparingly at first—is the younger brother of a man who wrote a book; a book about to be made into a film by William Chapman’s celebrity father and mother. William is hoping for a comeback, while James simply wants to protect his brother’s legacy. From the very start of the book, neither man really understands who the other one is—and the entire narrative (with all its twists and turns) is about them discovering the truth.

I loved the characters in the book—even the really annoying ones. James’s nephew Theo is possibly my favorite, an eighteen-year-old with undiscovered talent and a heart as big as all outdoors. But William’s famous Hollywood parents, Robert and Donna, are beautifully rendered—egotistical and selfish, yet somehow appealing and, ultimately loving parents. William’s brother Andy and his friends, as well as William’s friends and co-workers, all play significant roles in this complex patchwork of emotion and action. The incestuous world of Hollywood comes through, but somehow Barker manages to make the heart of it visible through the fog of self-interest and career-driven choices.

There is a villain here, but a lot of people make poor choices along the way, so the villain isn’t obvious right away. I was totally caught up in the tale of William and James, and loved that both of them ultimately saw with clarity and worked to find a way out of their mutual dilemma.

There are a lot of familiar tropes in this substantial book, but the author has made them his own, with freshness and affection.