I loved "Beast" by Pepper Pace when I first read it, and I knew I wanted to read another book of hers. Still I was nervous with what to expect. But 1954 was such a good read. It starts out with aspiring actress Bailey Westbrook who is invited to a mysterious casting call for an on-the-rise subscription show set in the realistic 1950s. The catch? The selected actors will have to live on the set for a full "year"/season and improv act as if they were in the 50s...and Bailey is a modern black woman.

This was set up to have such a juicy premise, and I love speculative African American fiction, so a plot like this really excited me. Act I and II were Bailey coming to terms with the conditions of being on a stage being watched by anonymous, rich viewers who wanted her to be as authentically 50s as possible. The kicker that the Producer and Creator of the show would also be playing her suburban husband and took "playing the part" to a whole 'other mad-scientist like level was also exhilarating. You really feel the stakes and I nearly binged half the book in 2 days.

The End of Act II/beginning of Act III is where I think things died down so to speak. Not to spoil anything but there was chatter that Bailey's character would stir a deeper conversation about racial relations in and set the tone for the Civil Rights Movement being depicted in the show, but instead we get...a storyline that does not highlight Bailey or amplify her character's struggles as a black woman living in  white suburbia at all.  I think Act III was written to ease some of the dramatic tension that had built up in Acts I and II but, I think it had the unintended effect of making all the other plots anticlimactic. I feel Bobby's "obsession" with a "perfect" 1950s was resolved all too easily. Their relationship also didn't really get too much heat. And the ending was...slightly shocking, but compared to the promises made in Act II, was tame in comparison. At this point is where I feel had the book stayed in the sci-fi/speculative fiction genre and not the modern contemporary category, it would've had a stronger plot.Although at 800 pages, I guess Ms. Pace wanted to wrap things up and get the novel over with :)


That said there were a lot of bright and great moments in this book that I liked.  I think the book set out to do what it intended to and despite some typos/naming mistakes, this is one of the better of the published Kindlevella novels I've read. The romance, the drama, the fun...all worth it. I'll definitely read more of her work.