Not It for Me: The It Girls by Karen Harper

I thought this book would be "right up my alley", as my dad used to say. The two real-life subjects, sisters Lucile Sutherland (later Lady Duff-Gordon), and Elinor Sutherland Glyn, were very interesting women. In the early 20th century, Lucile became a renowned couturier to the rich and famous, and Elinor an early romance novelist and later a Hollywood screenwriter.

There was way too much fanciful-sounding bodice-ripping interspersed into the historical material for my taste. Famous names were tantalizingly dropped everywhere, but they sometimes led nowhere or were not accurate, the most notable being Margaret Brown – "call me Molly". Brown was known as Maggie, not Molly, though she was later heralded as "the unsinkable Molly Brown".

All in all, quite a disappointment.