Glass Houses

by Ciaran Llachlan Leavitt

Two actresses fight the system and each other when the director of their career making film dies in the middle of production.

Genres: Lesbian, Romance, LGBT, Lesbian Romance, Celebrity, Fiction

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Ciarán Llachlan Leavitt is the author of two published novels. She is also an online author of several stories.

Reviews

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Jae and Reed are fully fleshed out characters as is the storyline which is very believable. As I read, I grew along with them. I've read this book twice already - fantastic. Pity Ms. Leavitt hasn't written more.

[Ndy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really pleasantly suprised when I found out about this book. Ciaran Llachlan Leavitt based the novel on Melissa Good's Tropical Storm. The story is a lovely showmance, which is about the filming of the movie adaptation of the Tropical Storm book, and the main characters are Reed, who is one of the lead actresses with a bitchy reputation, and plays Dar in the movie and Jae, the talented movie director. The book is pretty long, but it is full of angst and drama and a lot of reference to Melissa Good's novel. If you liked Tropical Storm, I think you will like this one either.

[Jelena · Rating 4 out of 5]

with some editing it would be 5 stars. slow, smart and complex

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book, which stands alone as a very well-written slow-burn romance even if you have not read Tropical Storm. I like the film-making portions and the slow but sweet development of the leads relationship from friends to closer friends to best friends and then finally (finally!) a couple. Don't let the cover put you off (it's weird and I have no idea what it's supposed to represent), but the book is lovely.

[KT · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fascinating to read a book that built off another author's book (in this case, Melissa Good's Tropical Storm). The GR synopsis is a little misleading, the book is about a lesbian director that takes over after the previous one passed away and how she wrangles one of her leading co-stars, a homophobic actress who has to play a lesbian character.

There were parts of it that didn't work for me, like one character referring to herself as "mm'girl" in her internal dialogue (who does that??), and all the technical nitty gritty details about making a movie, but ultimately I found that the pacing was done well for a story about a traumatized homophobe falling in love with another woman. As someone else here has said, it was "slow, smart, and complex."

[Jens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book too--I am not repeating what has already been written. I would rather note that most of the reviews are based on the pre-publication version on the internet and that many pointed out that they wished the numerous editing problems and typos would be gone in the final print version.

The book was published eventually in 2001. I have found a copy and can confirm that the published text is free of the above mentioned problems. But the book is out of print and it has become almost unavailable--unfortunately not many people will find and read it. One can find only a handful of copies at used-books sites (starting at around 100 USD) and there is no eBook version.

The Internet Archive has scans of the print edition and EPUB: https://archive.org/details/leavitt_g...

I wish I would know what to do about this. The publisher seems not to be in business any longer. I tried also to reach out to Ms. Leavitt but could not get in contact.

[Cheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, I go back and forth between 3 and 4 stars for this one. You can read my review on my site: http://reviews.c-spot.net/archives/1899