Gilbert, ever the schemer, lifted a few plot points from Casablanca (i.e., plagiarized the entire film and put a new title on it) and convinced his new stepfather to promote the script to actor Stephen Donato's producer.

Gilbert convinces his friends, Philip Cavanaugh and Claire Simmons, to move to Hollywood to help him rewrite the script.

But since Gilbert told the studio executives that the script was mostly Philip and Claire's, they must help rewrite the screenplay or else find any chance of a career ruined.

Get Stephen Donato to show up for a free weekend at her spa, and Moira will forget all about how "Casablanca" happened to be sold (again) to one of Hollywood's biggest producers.

Monty offers him a deal: Philip helps Lily turn her book into a best-seller, and nothing will be said to Diana.

The trio quickly get caught in a downward spiral of sex, closeted movie stars, hustlers, blackmail, secret videotape, a homophobic district attorney, a cute bartender, false fire alarms, car theft, impersonating a police officer, a sleazy public-access television host and a "night with Oscar" that has nothing to do with the Academy Awards.

In that vein, Publishers Weekly called My Lucky Star "a comic masterpiece that...rivals the best of Wodehouse."

"[4] The New York Daily News pointed out that readers might be overwhelmed by the elaborate and numerous plot twists and the broadly-drawn caricatures that are the novel's characters.

Reviewer Debra Weinstein applauded Keenan for capturing the way Hollywood insiders speak, subtly attack one another, and fixate on failure, and for documenting the inner lives of older gay men.

Although reviewer Mark Kamine noted that "Keenan gets off some decent one-liners" and that references to Los Angeles landmarks were "made sparingly and used to good effect", he felt the book engaged in "incessant name-dropping," that many of the jokes were too topical, and that Keenan's humor was too blunt.