Rating: 
Summary: What every Natalie Wood fan should have!!
Review: I have been a huge fan of Natalie Wood's since I first saw West Side Story.... Since then I have been watching every one of her movies I could get my hands on. I didn't know very much about Natalie Wood's life aside from what movies she was in until I saw her E! True Hollywood Story. After that I wanted to learn everything I could about this amazing actress. ... I found this book to be a great source of information about this amazing actress' life and it gives you an in depth detailing of her life as an actress and a normal person. If you are even slightly a fan of Natalie Wood's I would recommend reading this as well as getting your hands on her movies. Definitely worth more then five stars but that's the highest they would let me go.
Rating: 
Summary: intresting but boring
Review: i did think that this book brought a lot of interesting facts to light. it really does deatil her life. however, i felt that these details got quite boring and suzanne finstad was much more interested in explaining all of natalie's neurosis and fears in repetitive detail than let the reader discover it on their own.
overall, it was a strain to finish this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good
Review: This book was a good one, I read it in a week. But gave it away to a friend. I didn't think it was really worth keeping around, but its a good read if you like to read about famous people.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME BOOK!!
Review: I loved Child Bride! It was tender and tragic and truthful. A sad, gothic tale so beautifully told it made me weep. Whether you're an Elvis or Priscilla fan, you HAVE to read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Super-Trouper
Review: Well-done if somewhat over-dramatized biography of one of the last of the true old Hollywood superstars.Wood alternated between remarkably sensitive, empathetic performances, and coming off more like her adopted screen name, a bit stiff and wooden with an almost wind-up doll quality. Finstad does a good job of illustrating why: Wood's entire life was spent uncomfortably drifting between the rather easily won (though hard worked-for) glamourous stardom that was her pushy stage-mother's ambition for her to achieve, and the deep inner desire to be taken as a serious dramatic actress. She lost her childhood to her mother's drive, rebelled awkwardly but dramatically in discovering (and sometimes exploiting) her sexuality - for which she paid at least one ugly price, in finding herself raped by a star-producer (who had been one of her childhood idols) when she was still an underage teenager - and in later life rebelled against even her own earlier rebellion by becoming something of a prude. Finstad does an excellent job of covering Wood's child-star years, setting the stage for the very complex and rather fragile woman the actress was to become. Her coverage is less fleshed-out in Wood's mature years, and it often seems that she is deliberately under-representing Wood's personal flaws, which played a large part in unwise decisions as she grew older. She also does strangely very little follow-up on many of Wood's friends - such as Nick Adams, who played a significant role in the actress's life for a few years, even playing devil's-agent in assisting breakups of Wood's relationships that her mother or the studio didn't approve of - and then abruptly dropping them out of the narrative without even a single question as to why Wood continued such detrimental relationships in her life. Similarly, Finstad has taken knocks for representing Robert Wagner in an unflattering light, though actually she doesn't - it's just that the biographer relates allegations presented her from some of Wood's close friends that Wagner does nothing to refute, other than to issue a single press-agent letter saying the allegations are not true. Wagner refused to talk to Finstad - as he has to virtually everyone else, at least concerning the night of Wood's death - which cannot be held against Finstad. I didn't find her to be unfair to the man, and in fact felt she was as sympathetic to him (and to Wood's surviving family) as she could be under the circumstances. The book is well-structured and -written, and more in-depth than anything written about Wood to date. I eagerly look forward to other biographers' work on Wood's life, as Finstad's biography can hardly be considered the last word on the subject and requires at least a "second opinion." Nevertheless, it is a moving portrait of Wood, and a thoughtful analysis and study of her substantial body of highly memorable work.
Rating:
Summary: A very well-done book
Review: Before reading this biography, I never gave much thought to Natalie Wood. Then I read a review in a magazine and decided to read the book. It surprised me that she was a child star; I only knew that she was in West Side Story. It gave me insight on not just how she lived, but on how other movie stars of her time lived. A book with exhaustive research, her death by drowning was so detailed that it gave me sleepless nights. Natalie's fallouts with her mom were detailed; being a teenager myself, I could symptahize with her. Overall, this is a good book.
Rating:
Summary: A Fan's View of Natasha
Review: I have been a fan of Natalie Wood's for 30 years. I have read everything I could get my hands on that concerned Natalie. When I read Natasha, there were so many things in the book about Natalie that I had no idea about. Ms.Finstad has done so much research and found so many things about Natalie's life that it was such a joy to read especially since I thought I knew quite a bit and found out that I really didn't. You really get to know Natalie as a person and not just a movie star,the real Natalie with all of her experieces both positive and negative that let up to the end of her life. You will not be able to put this book down.
Rating:
Summary: Quibbling
Review: Re "A writing lesson needed, April 20, 2002": Really, if one is criticizing an author's writing style in so short a review, that one should be absolutely sure one's own critique is grammatically faultless. "Very often it's unclear who the author is quoting." Tsk! A most common error! "Who" is a direct object here and should be "whom." Enough! Nice to see a labor-of-love biography once in a while.
Rating: 
Summary: A writing lesson needed
Review: Whether the you agree or disagree with the author's conclusions and the robustness and reliability of the research that informs them is a personal choice. What struck me most about the book is how badly written it is - something I'm afraid it shares in common with a great number of celebrity biographies puiblished today. Natalie Wood deserves better than an author who does not know the difference between the words "determinism" and "determination" or how to use them correctly, to give just one example. The author also seems unable to construct sentences in a logical sequence. Very often it's unclear who the author is quoting. As I say, the content may or may not be accurate - the style, I'm afraid, is poor.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the Best
Review: Congratulations Ms. Finstad! Your moving portrait of Natalie Wood was among the best biographies I have ever read. Your depth of research is evident throughout and your writing skills are impeccable. I was particularly impressed with your effective foreshadowing of Natalie's death. I could not put the book down! What is your next book going to be and when will it be out?
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