Smile for the Cameras – Miranda Smith

After a hectic week of Jeremy being gone, I can get caught up on some things that aren’t work related!

Thanks to Bantam Books for the gifted copy

SMILE FOR THE CAMERAS – Miranda Smith (Released June 24th, 2025)

You can see my thoughts on her other book DID YOU SEEN EVIE? here!

Book Description:

An actress desperate to reclaim her fame must survive the real-life plot of the horror movie that made her famous in this psychologically twisted locked-room thriller influenced by ’90s slasher films.

Twenty years ago, Ella Winters was the it girl. She made a name for herself in Hollywood and throughout America as the final survivor in the cult-classic slasher Grad Night. But the real horror is what happened when the cameras weren’t rolling—something terrible that Ella and her co-stars agreed never to speak of again. Shortly after the movie’s premiere, Ella disappeared from the acting scene under the pretense of caring for her ailing mother, hoping for a quiet life out of the spotlight to ease her guilty mind.

Now, after her mother’s passing, Ella has decided to return to the silver screen. And with the cast and crew of Grad Night in the process of filming a reunion documentary, Ella has the perfect ticket back into Hollywood’s good graces. Weighed down by the secret she’s been keeping all these years, Ella apprehensively makes the trip to the original set—a cabin in rural Tennessee—to reunite with her castmates for the first time in over a decade. But when the actors begin to meet the exact gruesome fates of the characters they originally played, falling victim to someone dressed as the Grad Night villain, it’s clear their secret is out.

Now, the question Can the final girl survive one last nightmare?

My Thoughts: 4/5 stars

I had fun with this one! The final girl of a slasher horror cult classic comes back for a reunion documentary and finds herself fighting to be a final girl in real life. 

Ella was the actress everyone loved and wanted after her massive success as the Final Girl in Grad Night. After the movie opened, she disappeared from the industry entirely to help her ailing mother. Now that her mother has passed, she’s ready to dive back in and get her career back. A reunion for Grad Night seems like the perfect opportunity. 

While this had all the 90s horror slasher vibes and some eerie moments, I wouldn’t say it’s entirely scary or too gory. The secrets Ella and her cast were keeping about what went on behind the scenes were the real horror of the story. The way the industry treated and still treats women and what they had to endure to keep their careers from tanking.