Superstar

Gotti (I'll Be Watching You) makes beach readers an offer they can't refuse with a third novel best described as book candy. Cassidy English and Chelsea Hutton, switched at birth 33 years ago, have led very different lives. While Cassidy was growing up in the lap of Hollywood luxury, Chelsea spent her youth with an impoverished single mother, suffering from one illness after another. Yet all was not privilege and luxury for Cassidy either. Her actress mother was murdered when she was 10 years old and her director father was jailed for the crime. New DNA evidence freed him almost 12 years later, but he kept his distance from Cassidy for another decade, claiming shame and humiliation. Chelsea, all grown up, emotionally troubled and armed with the truth about her and Cassidy's past, wants revenge on Cassidy for the life she believes was stolen from her. Cassidy, now a hot producer and completely in the dark about the switch, has been called in by her ailing father to help keep his studio from going under. Jack Cavelli, the most powerful man in Tinseltown, strong-arms Cassidy into letting him cast the female lead in the film that's supposed to save the studio. The starlet's appearance (it's Chelsea, of course) on the set sparks a series of fireworks that will change both women's lives. Gotti's not-so-amicable princess-and-pauper tale of obsession and deception moves from the glitzy mansions and film sets of the movie industry to the avenues of Paris and the gaming tables of Monaco before jetting in for its climax at a masked ball in Venice. Though Chelsea's film debut at age 33 as a ""young"" actress in a notoriously youth-obsessed industry defies credibility, readers looking for a Collinsesque treat this summer will probably be entertained--but then there's the genuine article by Jackie C. herself, reviewed below. (Aug.)