The Seventh Veil of Salome is Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s last book published before The Bewitching and somehow I only just learned about its existence. I really like Moreno-Garcia’s novels, so of course I had to read it. It is historical fiction like her other novels, but it is missing the supernatural elements that I enjoy about her storytelling.

The Seventh Veil of Salome is set in 1950s Hollywood and is about a big-budget movie that is being made about Salome, the biblical figure who was the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas and requested the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The role of Salome is one that every actress wants, but the director ends up casting a complete unknown, Vera Larios, a young Mexican woman who was working at her father’s dentist office when she was discovered. Nancy Hartley, a wannabe actress whose career has gone nowhere after four years in LA, is cast in a bit role in the movie and is insanely jealous of Vera for “stealing” the role that she thinks should have been hers.

What I like about The Seventh Veil of Salome is the setting. My mother is a cinephile, so I grew up watching a lot of movies and I know a lot of random information about movies and actors. It was fun seeing anecdotes about real actors in the story and getting a behind the scenes look at the movie industry. It is also interesting to experience the 1950s movie scene from Vera’s perspective as a Mexican actress. Even though she has been cast in the lead role of a big movie, no one shows any respect for her, and she experiences racial aggression at every turn.

The characters, though, were kind of weak in my opinion, and the supporting characters especially feel merely sketched out. Vera demonstrates a strong sense of self-worth, especially late in the novel, so her motivation for taking the part of Salome (to please her mother who has always favoured her younger sister) does not make much sense to me. She does not even care much about acting. Nancy Hartley is just another pretty face with a deluded sense of self-worth trying to make it in Hollywood. Moreno-Garcia attempts to create empathy for Nancy through her background as a failed child actor and her strained relationship with a father who does not like her very much, but she is just a nasty bitch, and when her moral conscience nags at her about all the bad things she has done, she still chooses violence.

Salome is also a character in the novel, but her story feels underdeveloped and hurried, which maybe is the point because her story is the movie, a bloated blockbuster that has gone through constant re-writes. Salome is a sheltered woman who has only known luxury, and there is an abrupt dichotomy between her disdain for her suitors and her sudden desire for John the Baptist (Jokanaan in the novel), a poor prophet who preaches against her mother and stepfather. I wish Salome’s story had been expanded upon so I could better understand her motivation for falling in love with Jokanaan.

The Seventh Veil of Salome is a good enough book if you want an entertaining and sensationalistic story about people grasping for fame. If you like Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, then you will like this book. It just did not draw me in like Moreno-Garcia’s other novels.