cover image Holly Would Dream

Holly Would Dream

Karen Quinn. Touchstone Books, $14 (419pp) ISBN 978-1-4165-7312-8

Wife in the Fast Lane author Quinn goes all Breakfast at Tiffany's with the disappointingly un-Golightly Holly Ross, who has managed to become the director's assistant at the National Museum of Fashion after a hardscrabble childhood. When socialite Sammie Kittenplatt, a woman who's nasty, superconnected and ""pruggly like Diana Vreeland,"" beats Holly out for a curator's job, she's crushed. Then Holly's relationship with dashing finace Allesandro hits a very different brick wall, and she gets humiliated (by Sammie, natch) in front of major museum donor Denis King. Yet a make-or-break opportunity arises: if Holly can raise a mil for the museum while doing a speaking engagement on the ultra-luxe Tiffany cruise, she'll finally get promoted. Holly brings along her scruffy, loveable Pops and she soon discovers big fish Denis on board. The madcap, caricature-driven antics go decidedly overboard as a trunkload of original Audrey Hepburn original costumes goes missing. Quinn's latest offers only the all-too-occasional glint of magic.