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Summary: For Garland fans, the book is a must read!
Review: For Judy Garland obsessed fans, the book will depict her life from her daughter Lorna's perspective. These readers should enjoy the family scoop from an inside observer. For those readers who enjoy "celebrity gossip", they will also find this book an enticing, easy-to-read memoir. However, for others, the author may be viewed as wanting attention from being "victimized" all these years as Judy Garland's "other daughter". In that regard, the book is over-exaggerated especially in Lorna's role as her "mother's keeper" and her strong, seemingly surprising ability, to overcome her own addictions all on her own! Yet, she has no shame in depicting her sister Liza Minelli's life as in need of desparate help and intercession. Even though Lorna states she is not jealous of her sister Liza Minnelli's fame, her book foils that statement. The "inside" writings on her sister's addictions surly were left better unsaid. Liza Minnelli should have every right to be angry with her sister Lorna at such tell-all, gossipy--albeit unfortunate and devastating--news. Why doesn't Lorna share the same information about her brother Joey? She merely states that he has had addiction problems also. Near the end of the book, Lorna states that unfortunately she and Liza have been out of touch recently. Could it be jealousy at Liza's fame? Just a thought since she relishes her love of her brother and "protects" him from a scandalous tongue-lashing.
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Summary: Captivating story,yet had hints of name dropping & bragging
Review: In my opinion, Lorna Luft's story starts off as one of celebrity name dropping and a brag session of her Hollywood lifestyle. Further into the book, however, I saw what a remarkable relationship the author had with her mother. I wittnessed the author's maturity level transpire into a level headed, realistic, and strong woman. Nothing like the little girl who came off as a spoiled princess earlier in the the book. As the reader, I sincerely felt Lorna Luft's pain of her mother's lifestyle and death, as well as her need and courage to steer clear of her own lifestyle, which was headed in the same disaterous direction. All in all, I couldn't put the thing down!
Rating: 
Summary: This woman can no longer have any friends in Hollywood!
Review: This is truly a tell-all book about Judy Garland and many others in Hollywood. Even Lauren Bacall doesn't come out well! It is unclear why all those people needed to be bashed to tell the story Ms. Luft intended to tell. The details of Judy Garland's life and Ms. Luft's childhood are tragic to be sure; however, the book takes a turn for the worse after the death of Judy Garland. It is especially disheartening to see how Ms. Luft tears Liza Minelli apart. Its a quick read, thank goodness. Save your money!
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Summary: A hair-raising ride under the rainbow.
Review: Any hard-core Judy Garland fan should be familiar with a lot of the stories Garland's daughter, Lorna Luft, reveals in this harrowing memoir of a family at once terrifyingly dysfunctional yet loving. We've heard of the drugs and booze and marriages yet not until now, with this very open inside view, do we come to some understanding of a family some would say never had a chance. Lorna Luft, Garland's "other daughter", takes us for a hell of a ride under a rainbow laced with pills, blood, cocaine, love, laughs, booze and parental neglect, and all of it pervading the lives of this century's greatest female pop music star and her children. That Luft survived to even write this book is a testament to her strength of will and good sense. With the exception of the beginning of several chapters where the writing is more carefully thought out, Luft's engaging conversational tone is consistent throughout. Her tendency though to make grand pronouncements of impending doom at the end of several chapters makes us wince because we can't imagine anything worse occuring; it does, time and again. In fact, Luft's life is like a Pearl White serial with Luft in constant danger and on a runaway train bent on derailing any moment. Thankfully, Luft eventually takes control, slows down and allows herself to breathe. Certainly, by the end at least, Garland was certifiably insane; we're pained to the soul when as a child Luft witnesses a surreal scene of violence between her mother and husband Mark Herron. Garland's heartbreaking scenes of self-inflicted physical and emotional pain are tempered by occassional howls of laughter and the all-embracing love of her children. Throughout all, Luft remained a loyal caretaker. As for her father Sid Luft, he just wasn't there for his children due to Garland's paranoia during and after their divorce. His effort to help and understand and cope with a daughter nearing a nervous collapse after her mother's death was non-existent. Luft's descent into drugs paralled her sister Liza Minnelli's own drug problems. Luft is brutally honest about it, even revealing she was the one who introduced her sister to cocaine. No, "Mommie Dearest", Garland truely loved her children and there were times she even tried to overcome her addictions. It's a shame she didn't love them enough to try and take stock and understand their precarious postion in life. She could have saved herself and her family from that genetically-induced psychedelic rainbow forever hovering over their heads and threatening them with a deluge of despair.
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Summary: Lorna's got guts!
Review: I found this book amazing in its ability to take screen icon Judy Garland and unflinchingly show her as not just a troubled star with an addiction problem, but as somebody's mother. The fact that Luft brings this off with such warmth and insight is a tribute to her storytelling power. My only complaints are with the HORRIBLE copy editing job on this book; spelling and grammatical errors abound, and sentences are literally repeated mere lines from each other. Miss Luft deserves better. Can't wait for the TV mini-series!
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Summary: Addiction as an Equal Opportunity Family Dis-ease
Review: My parents named my younger sister for The Judy, I attended the concerts & tv series- often seeing Lorna & Joe in the front row trying to stay awake. The talented Judy has been a family legacy in my house- a similar home fraught with the addicted family system. Lorna has done a wonderful healing piece with this treatise- providing a model of compassion through understanding and love. This book and Lorna reminds me of something life has taught me: the broken heart is the heart that has been opened- Lorna's love for her mother, father, sister and brother, and her own precious children, shine through in this exercise for compassionate healing.
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Summary: Excellent
Review: This book shows the many sides of Judy Garland and her family. Her daughter does an excellent job of displaying the truth. Parts of this book are humorous and parts are heart breaking but all in all it makes me enjoy Garland even more.
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Summary: Lorna Luft is candid and honest about her life & family
Review: Lorna Luft has written an exellent book about her life with her family and is honest about the struggles she went throu to take care of her mother in the last years of judy's life
Rating: 
Summary: Starred Kirkus Review
Review: From Kirkus Reviews: Breathless writing, tight structure, and an endless A-list of stars make this memoir by the younger Garland daughter a movie fan's parfait. Daughter of Garland and businessman Sid Luft, Lorna writes this book neither to glorify nor to vilify her family, but to tell "a truer story" about "a group of people who grew up in the public eye and got through it all the best way they could." Thankfully, understatement ends there. Beginning with Frances Gumm's first steps onstage at age two and ending with her daughter Lorna's happy second marriage, the book is rife with dramatic events. Skillfully divided into two parts-- life with Mama, life after her death--it details Garland's decades-long chemical dependency (including her first studio-sanctioned Benzedrine) and Lorna's early life as her caregiver, her emotional swings, and especially her great love for her two daughters and her son, Joe. Lorna also charts Garland's hard-won sobriety and attempts to bring Liza to detoxification programs. Throughout, the book brims with famous friends: Uncle Frank Sinatra, girlfriend's parents Bogart and Bacall, JFK and his sweet-voiced wife Jackie, early love Barry Manilow. Everything is presented in a pleasingly sustained voice that blends once-stylish phrasings, self-help lingo, and quirky if awkward locutions to create a linguistic world in which "damn straight," "dysfunctional," and the kooky line "For every camel, there's a last straw, and there was for me" coexist. It also suits the writer, for as she presents herself-- by turns mature, facile, feeling, and gracious--she is a '90s everywoman, the person you'd see yourself being if you had been the child of a troubled movie legend. Confessional yet affectionate, this grants weight and closure to an overdiscussed film family.
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Summary: This book is written in very poor taste!
Review: The "Other" daughter of the lovely Judy Garland has published a lot of information on her mother that we really don't need to know!! Its more of how she didn't like having to deal with family problems and more or less a pitty party for herself! Save your money unless you like to hear Lorna complan on how bad she had it! Lorna If you read this I'm VERY DISSAPOINTED in you!
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