Hollywood Husbands might be considered a novel of incident, episodic in organization and loose in structure. It might also be considered a novel of manners, focusing as it does on the particular class mores of Hollywood.

Realistic, it is not particularly satiric, although some passages seem a bit tongue in cheek. A modern precedent is Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers.

Robbins is a favorite writer of Collins, and his novel has the same kind of insider look at Hollywood's rich and famous that Collins's work has. Other favorite writers of hers, Mickey Spillane and Grace Metalious, root into the underside of their characters' lives in the same exploratory way Collins has found works so well for her.