Lucky Break by Esther Freud

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I really, really wanted to love this one...I'm going through another "theatrical" phase, had an amazing theatre fest during half term (will try put something about that on my other blog, at some point!) and wanted to wallow in total thesp-ville.  Unfortunately, although I liked it - I didn't love it.
But I did really like these things...
1. the cover!
2. it's beautifully written;
3. it starts off well and brought back vivid memories of the drama students I hung out with when I was at uni.  The whole arty, terribly self-conscious, clever-dickiness of them! Bless...but I can say that, as only a real friend would help them learn lines from Ibsen without the aid of alcohol!  It also reminded me that the tutors were even more pretentious than the students!
4. I liked the character of Nell and although I thought it pretty obvious that she'd probably be the "success" story, she was interesting and well developed.

So there's lots of things to like and I would certainly say to give it a go.  I've never read Esther Freud before, but will look at her other novels.  But overall, I just found the whole thing a bit unsatisfactory and superficial.  I was expecting more and I felt the ending was just too "fairy tale" in a book that at times was brutally honest about an actor's life.