Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely?

By Sarah McCoy

Book Overview

From New York Times bestselling author Sarah McCoy--a spellbinding novel based on a true story: a beautiful young movie star of Hollywood's Golden Age gives up her bright career to become a nun.

In 1969, twenty-three-year-old starlet Lori Lovely, the apple of Hollywood's eye, shocks the world by ditching a promising film career to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as a Benedictine nun. Gossip columnists and scandal sheets can't get enough of the story. Why would such a beautiful girl take the veil? Was she hiding from someone? Did it have anything to do with her costar, heartthrob singer Lucas Wesley?

In 1990, Lu Tibbott is under the gun to complete her senior thesis in modern American history. Instead of spending weeks in dusty archives, Lu decides to dig into a true twentieth-century mystery and write about her aunt Lori, now the Mother Abbess at a cloistered convent in rural New England. Biographers, journalists, and media types have long speculated about her aunt Lori's sudden departure from Hollywood. Mother Lori, however, has refused all requests for interviews--until Lu arrives at the abbey with a tape recorder in hand. To her delight, Mother Lori announces she's finally ready to talk...but only if Lu is truly ready to listen.

Lu is shocked to discover that the story of Lori Lovely's rise in Hollywood was far more tumultuous than she'd ever expected, a fairy tale twisting with ambition, unforeseen alliances, forbidden love, and secrets. What began as a history thesis now threatens to upend all their lives with its unexpected truths, especially as the media gets wind of Lu's project and begins to ask...

Whatever happened to Lori Lovely?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0063338742
• ISBN13: 9780063338746
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

What can happen in real life!

1/11/26 - 1/16/26 Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely by Sarah McCoy. This book was the first Monthly read for the month of January in 2026 read for Brenda Novak’s Book Group. It was definitely a novel of interesting life of Lori, her niece Lucille and others that intertwined throughout the book. Lori’s story intertwines with her niece’s reflections on having to get her thesis done for college in order to graduate. Lori’s life goes from North Carolina to New York City and then on to London, where she blossoms in a film and meets people that she bonds with that matter in her life. After the film wraps she travels to promote it and lands in Los Angeles, and this is where her naivety shows through, and she ends up with the wrong people. Her career lands her back in Europe and her good friends and a secret that pushes her to the brink of changing careers. She disappears from the world of film, except her family and a dear close friend from her past knows who she is and where she is. Her niece, Lu, is writing her paper on her aunts life and Lori’s secret has to come out now but will her niece write about? Or leave the secret buried? it was a interesting book and probably at mid-point I had it figured out what happened to Lori Lovely or at least part of it. It’s not a tear jerker book but it holds a reality of this can happen in life and does happen in life.