“Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?” usually refers to the 2023 debut novel Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith Paul, not to a real-life scandal.

Quick Scoop

  • The story follows Kitty Karr Tate, a white Old Hollywood film icon whose death and shocking will set off a wave of gossip, conspiracy theories, and media frenzy.
  • She leaves her vast multimillion-dollar estate to three Black sisters from a wealthy Hollywood family, the St. John sisters, which makes everyone ask: why them and what secret connects them to Kitty?
  • As the sisters dig into Kitty’s journals, the book unravels buried family ties, questions of race and passing, and the ugly side of fame and American celebrity mythology.

What it’s really about

  • The novel mixes Hollywood glamour with heavy themes: racism, colorism, passing as white, and how wealth and secrets get passed down through generations.
  • Kitty’s rise from the Jim Crow South to Oscar-winning star forces her to “learn” how to behave like a white woman and hide her Black roots, creating a double life that drives much of the drama.

Why it’s trending

  • The book was picked as a May 2023 selection for Reese Witherspoon’s book club and also chosen as a Book of the Month main pick, which gave it a big boost in online conversations and forums.
  • Readers often compare its vibe to old-Hollywood stories like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo —but with a sharper focus on race, identity, and the politics of who gets to be seen as “America’s sweetheart.”

If you’re seeing forum chatter

On forums and bookish corners of the internet, people tend to:

  • Debate Kitty’s choices: was she a survivor of her era or complicit in a racist system that benefitted her?
  • Talk about the twisty family secrets and whether the inheritance was justice, guilt, love, or all three tangled together.

TL;DR: When people ask “did you hear about Kitty Karr,” they’re usually talking about this novel’s fictional scandal—an Old Hollywood icon, a shocking will, and the explosive secrets about race and identity that come out after she dies.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.