#CBR11 Book 93: "Headliners" by Lucy Parker

Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer! I received this as an ARC from NetGalley, but this has in no way influenced my review. 

While this works fine as a standalone contemporary romance, both characters and some of the events that complicate their relationship early on are introduced in The Austen Playbook, which I can also heartily recommend.

Official book description:
He might be the sexiest man in London, according to his fan site (which he definitely writes himself), but he’s also the most arrogant man she’s ever met.

She might have the longest legs he’s ever seen, but she also has the sharpest tongue.

For years, rival TV presenters Sabrina Carlton and Nick Davenport have traded barbs on their respective shows. The public can’t get enough of their feud, but after Nick airs Sabrina’s family scandals to all of Britain, the gloves are off. They can barely be in the same room together—but these longtime enemies are about to become the unlikeliest of cohosts.

With their reputations on the rocks, Sabrina and Nick have one last chance to save their careers. If they can resurrect a sinking morning show, they’ll still have a future in television. But with ratings at an all-time low and a Christmas Eve deadline to win back the nation’s favor, the clock is ticking—and someone on their staff doesn’t want them to succeed.

Small mishaps on set start adding up, and Sabrina and Nick find themselves—quelle horreur—working together to hunt down the saboteur…and discovering they might have more in common than they thought. When a fiery encounter is caught on camera, the public is convinced that the reluctant cohosts are secretly lusting after one another.

The public might not be wrong.

Their chemistry has always been explosive, but with hate turning to love, the stakes are rising and everything is on the line. Neither is sure if they can trust these new feelings…or if they’ll still have a job in the New Year.

To say that I was eager to get my hands on this ARC is an understatement. I renewed the site once or twice a day, checking whether I'd been granted a copy. Of course, about the point when I was starting to give up hope and stopped checking, I received an e-mail confirming I was one of the lucky ones to get this book early. Lucy Parker is one of the few authors writing, in any genre, who has the honour of being not only on my auto-buy list, but one of the few who deserves the very coveted pre-order treatment. So even before I was granted a copy of this, I had paid money for it, because all of Parker's previous four novels have proven excellent reads, and I was pretty sure this would be too.

While Sabrina and Nick may initially detest each other, they are also professionals, who do the jobs they are hired to and don't let their animosity for their closest co-worker get in the way of doing their very best. Of course, neither of them are stupid, either, and it doesn't take them long at all to figure out that there is someone trying to sabotage the show. They're unsure of whether the guilty party has it in for one or both of them, but once they join forces to try to flush the culprit out, they also end up spending a lot more time together, and all that passionate dislike starts turning into something a bit more affectionate.

For those readers who have read The Austen Playbook, there are cameos from Freddy, Griff, Charlie and some of the Carlton sisters' friends who we were introduced to in that book. The two sisters are still really close, and Nick's thoughtless behaviour taking advantage of the Carlton family's scandals affected both of them, and pretty much ruined his long friendship with Griff. So obviously Sabrina takes her sister's opinions into consideration when her feelings towards Nick start to change.

Sadly, there is also a re-appearance of Sabrina's douchy movie star ex-boyfriend, and I was deeply grateful that there didn't appear to be any jealousy drama to complicate the plot, and that his appearance was relatively brief. I'm a little bit worried that movie-ex is going to feature as a hero in one of Parker's future books, but at the same time, she's written enough of my keeper shelf novels by now that if that's a choice she ends up making, I will probably end up loving him as much as I do Richard, Luc, Leo, Griff and now Nick.

It was going to take a lot for me not to like this book. I've never rated a Lucy Parker novel lower than four stars, this features enemies to lovers (one of my favourite tropes), while also displaying a lot of competency porn. Both Sabrina and Nick are amazing at their jobs and work really hard for the things they've achieved. The book gives fun insight into the behind the scenes bustle of a popular talk show and there's an amusing minor subplot where both Sabrina and Nick have to scramble to secure a horrible electronic toy, the most sought after present of the Christmas season, for a child they care for.

All I can say is that if you've enjoyed any of Parker's former novels, you will absolutely like this one too and should consider pre-ordering it. I still think The Austen Playbook is my absolute favourite, followed by Pretty Face in second place, but this may edge out Act Like It for third (because it doesn't have that slightly shaky last act with the overly dramatic building collapse). The book will be on general release on Janurary 20th, 2020.

Judging a book by its cover: While I think Act Like It still has my absolute favourite of Lucy Parker's book covers, this comes in at a close second. There is such utter joy on both of the cover model's faces and the background and lights is magical and romantic. They seem utterly besotted with one another, which is exactly what you want from a romance cover.

#CBR11 Book 23: "The Austen Playbook" by Lucy Parker

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 5 stars

Disclaimer! I got an ARC from NetGalley. This has in no way influenced my review.  I had already pre-ordered my copy of the book months ago, long before the ARCs became available. Also, because I am terribly late in reviewing it, the book is available on sale from the e-book vendor of your choice. It's excellent, you should totally spend your monies on it!

But what is the book about, Malin? You cannot expect people to fork out their hard-earned cash without knowing anything of the story. So here goes...

Frederica "Freddy" Carlton has been a critical darling on the London stage for more than a decade, having started out as a child star. She started out doing a lot of comedic work and musicals, but now her father, also her manager, wants her to focus on more dramatic and "serious" acting, following in the footsteps of her acclaimed grandmother, who was famous not just for her dramatic roles, but for later in her career writing one of the seminal dramas of the 20th Century. To say Freddy feels the family legacy weighing heavily on her shoulders is putting it lightly.

James "Griff" Ford-Griffin is the only rational and pragmatic member of a family of dreamers. When he's not on television as a theatre historian, he writes insightful and scathing reviews in one of the big London papers. His parents keep spending money they don't have hand over fist, his brother is well-meaning but rather ineffectual when it comes to actually helping out in any real way, while Griff is trying to keep the family estate afloat though any means possible.

Freddy and Griff first run into one another in a pub in London, after Freddy and her TV presenter sister has overheard Griff taking apart Freddy's most recent theatre performance in very unflattering terms. Even though his judgement of her acting is rather brutal, Freddy is also deeply impressed with how Griff seems to be the only one to see what she really wants to do with her career and how these new serious parts are sapping her spirit.

They meet again about a year later, when Freddy arrives along with a large cast of high profile TV and theatre actors to take part in "The Austen Playbook", a one night televised stage performance of a popular "Choose your own adventure" computer game, starring Jane Austen's many popular characters in a drawing room mystery. The TV viewers will have the chance to vote at various points of the performance on what direction they want the play to continue, meaning all the actors will have to learn a truly staggering amount of lines and plot variants. The location for this special TV event? Griff's family estate, which sports its own private theatre (built by his love struck grandfather for Freddy's actress/playwright grandmother, when they had a torrid affair back in the day). Griff and his brother have been promised a share in the profits and desperately hope that the event is a hit, or it's pretty much bye bye family mansion.

Freddy is bubbly, cheerful and optimistic. Griff is icy, sarcastic and tends to see the worst in any situation. They are polar opposites, but both became aware of the sizzling chemistry between them that first time they met in the pub, and staying in close confines on Griff's family estate means they soon find the opportunity to act on their mutual attraction. Complicating matters further is the fact that Griff is developing a film about Henrietta Carlton, Freddy's famous grandmother (and her affair with his grandfather), while Freddy's father is trying to stop him from getting the film financed. Freddy's manager dad is also deeply displeased about her choice to do something quite as frivolous as playing Lydia Bennett in a crowd-pleasing TV event, when she should be focusing all her energies on getting cast as the lead in "The Velvet Room", her grandmother's famous play.

History would have it that Henrietta wrote the play while staying on the Ford-Griffin's estate, but there are details to the story that don't entirely add up. In between trying to learn lines from a script the size of a phone book and trying to avoid the malicious attention of one of her fellow actresses, Freddy tags along with Griff to discover more about their grandparents' love affair and uncover secrets that have been buried for several generations. Secrets that involve both their families and could have huge ramifications if exposed.

The romance between Freddy and Griff develops quickly (they also address this IN the story), but they had met and formed an attraction before they are suddenly thrust into close proximity, and Parker really does make it work. The main couple are not the only great characters here. The supporting cast, especially Griff's brother Charlie and Freddy's sister (who will obviously be the heroine of Parker's next romance) are also excellent.

Neither Freddy, nor Griff, have easy relationships with their parents. Freddy's father is a former actor, who when injured on stage (rescuing a young Freddy from falling props) wrote a best-selling biography about his mother and is now an acclaimed theatre writer, as well as her demanding manager. Unfortunately, they have very different ideas of which direction Freddy's career should be taking, and what sort of parts would suit her best. Freddy feels obliged to follow the family legacy and take the dramatic roles her father expects of her, but dreams of starring in a big fantasy musical production, doing light hearted work and making audiences happy instead. Griff's parents are impractical dreamers, who spend outrageous amounts of money on materials and supplies for their extremely elaborate doll houses and miniature landscapes. They have absolutely no concerns about the family being nearly bankrupt and Griff having to mortgage his London flat to try to pay off some of the family debts.

I liked the underlying mystery of what exactly happened the summer that Henrietta Carlton wrote "The Velvet Room" and how Griff and Freddy's investigation uncovers new truths about previously believed facts. I absolutely loved the whole concept of "The Austen Playbook", taking Austen's many characters and pitting them against each other in a country house murder mystery, with the audience being allowed to decide what happens next. I would be glued to my television if this existed for real. I liked the rivalry between Freddy's sister and her handsome talk show nemesis (who is clearly going to be the hero in the next book - the enemies to lovers factor is going to be off the charts). I didn't particularly like the bitchy actress making life difficult for everyone during the production, but I don't think we're supposed to. It was nice to see a cameo from Leo from Making Up, with a brief mention of his girlfriend and baby! While they're only mentioned in passing, there was enough detail about the fantasy book series being adapted into the musical Freddy wants to star in that I found yet another fictional book series I would probably become completely hooked on. Seriously, there are so many things I could mention that worked for me, and I can't think of a single thing I disliked.

I feel like I should personally apologise to Lucy Parker. I got this book as an ARC in the middle of March and devoured it in less than 24 hours. I've been in and out of reading slumps this year, and this book certainly pulled me out of one. I'm a huge fan of all of her previous books, but was pretty sure this was her best one so far. About a month later, I re-read the book, which confirmed to me that yes, it is my favourite of all her four books and my initial belief that it was a 5-star book entirely held up. This book was an utter delight to read. I think every single aspect of the story works for me. However, the whole point of ARCs is for the readers to get their reviews out in a timely fashion, to generate advance buzz and hopefully help the author sell more copies of their books. The Austen Playbook has been out for more than a month now, and I'm only now getting round to writing about it. So dear Ms. Parker, if you're reading this, please forgive me. Your book is amazing and I loved it both times I read it. I'm already looking forward to Sabrina's book. If I am granted an ARC of that one, I promise to try to get the review out in a timely fashion. No matter what happens, I will pre-order it the second links become available. Your writing is a gift.

Judging a book by its cover: Much as I love the book, I am not really a fan of the cover. While the female cover model looks a lot like Freddy is described in the book, the strange pose with her legs and feet in the foreground gives her strange proportions. The male cover model, on the other hand, is a complete disaster. Griff is described as a short-haired Lucius Malfoy, with imperious features and platinum blond hair. He also always seems immaculately dressed, normally in tailored suits. The cover model looks to have a bad bleach job and wears and old t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looks like he's come straight from the gym - not at all like Griff is described throughout the novel. It makes me sad, because a romance this great, deserves a much better cover.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 102: "Pretty Face" by Lucy Parker

Page count: 400 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

This is a re-read of one of my favourites. My original review (which is quite lengthy) can be found here.

We're pretty much in the coldest and darkest part of the year here in Norway now and it gets harder to motivate oneself for anything except hibernation, really. So with an ever more attentive and demanding baby and preparing to go back to work as a teacher for the first time in over a year, I'm not really up for anything very challenging to read in my spare time. Hence the need for comfort reading.

As I mentioned in my review of The Wedding Date, neither 2017, nor 2018 have been especially great years for romance, but Pretty Face, released early last year, was absolutely one of the exceptions. I remembered it being very good, and re-reading it, I started wondering whether I should actually change my rating to a full five stars. Having thought about it some more, I'm going to leave my rating the same, mainly because great as it is, I would have preferred a bit more time reading about Luc and Lily as an established couple before the book ended, not just the very sweet epilogue.

In her London Celebrities series, Lucy Parker is working her way through her favourite romantic tropes. In the wonderful Act Like It, she covers the "fake dating" trope, in this, she covers "the age gap", which can be extremely tricky to manage properly. Romance with a substantial age difference is difficult to write convincingly, because done badly, this trope can be reading about a guy having a midlife crisis with someone young enough to be his daughter, or some slightly damaged woman with daddy issues trying to work through them with someone inappropriately old for her.

Interestingly, while Luc is certainly going through something resembling crisis (trying to refurbish the family theatre, having recently very publicly broken up with his famous partner), he's in no way having a midlife crisis. Lily certainly has a complex emotional relationship with regards to her father, considering she's the product of his adulterous affair with her mother, and while she knows deep down that he loves her, she's never really been welcome in his home while her stepmother was there and frequently, her father puts himself and his business ventures ahead of spending time with Lily. As does Lily's mother, and for a time, Lily's ex-roommate Trix. Yet it never feels like she's throwing herself at Luc, she is in fact trying very hard to fight the attraction, for a number of reasons (see my original review for her three relationship rules).

Having revisited this, I'm very excited that Lucy Parker has another novel out next year (starring Freddie Carlton, Lily's co-star in this book), but also sad that it's not out until April. That's a long time to wait for what I am hopeful is going to become another favoured comfort read in years to come.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 10: "Making Up" by Lucy Parker

Page count: 330 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Disclaimer! This was an ARC granted to me through NetGalley. It has in no way influenced my review. 

Beatrix "Trix" Lane may be tiny, but she also used to be fierce and confident and very ambitious. Until her former boyfriend pretty much broke her down entirely and left her a pale shadow of herself. Now that the star of the fancy acrobatic West End show she's in has been possibly permanently damaged after a fall, Trix has a chance at the lead role, but she's no longer sure she's acrobatic or talented enough. To add to her stress levels, the person who annoys her the most in the world, Leo Magasiva, has just been hired on to the show's makeup team.

While he's quite the special effects wizard, Leo Magasiva has career issues of his own, after a very famous film star neglected to disclose an allergy and Leo's makeup job caused a horrible allergic reaction. Leo was fired and blacklisted, and now needs to really prove himself, preferably by winning first prize in the UK SFX makeup artistry championship. He's secured his younger sister an internship with the theatre, but she appears to have had a complete personality transplant after a year in New York and is now behaving like a stuck-up brat and doing her very best to piss off not only Leo, but everyone around her. So having to work in close quarters, and as it turns out, sharing living quarters with Trix Lane, is not exactly his idea of fun.

Trix and Leo used to be friends growing up, until Trix got a scholarship to a fancy boarding school and left Leo behind forever. They nevertheless seemed to run into each other all over the place over the years, constantly sniping and trying to one-up one another. Now, working on the same show and living across the hall from one another, their snarky rivalry is brought to a head, and before long, they've moved from hate to something else entirely. They may have a long history, but is there any chance of a future together? If Leo wins his SFX championship, it means a lucrative contract in LA, while if Trix gets the starring role in The Festival of Masks, she's staying in London indefinitely.

Lucy Parker's Act Like It was one of my favourite romances (and books in general) of 2016, and the follow-up, Pretty Face, was one of the few really memorable romances of all of 2017, and an even better book than the first in the London Celebrities series. So when I saw a tweet from Ms. Parker saying that her new book, Making Up, was available upon request from NetGalley, I requested it immediately and crossed my fingers that I would be lucky enough to be granted a copy. While I read and review a LOT of romance, being granted an ARC was by no means a certainty, as I have a pretty bad track-record with reviewing my NetGalley books before the deadlines. However, the book gods smiled up on me, and even though the book isn't out until the end of May, I have been lucky enough to read it.

Of all of the three Lucy Parker books I've read so far, this is probably the weakest. It has a lot of good thing going for it, but was not as instantly likable to me as Act Like It and it lacked the emotional depth of Pretty Face. It has a lot of the things Ms. Parker does well - a likable cast of characters, great banter, competence porn (both Leo and Trix are very good at what they do, for all that Trix' confidence and self-esteem has been entirely eroded by her d*ck of an ex-boyfriend). I thought the initial conflict between Trix and Leo was solved a little bit too quickly and that the readers could have been given a bit more insight into the situation with Leo's bratty sister earlier in the story, but I liked the book and for those readers who have read and enjoyed Pretty Face, it might be nice to know that there are extended cameos from Trix' best friend Lily and her fiancee Luc, who actually get married in this book. Lucy Parker is a talented enough writer that while I would rank this third of her three books, it's still a very enjoyable read and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 16: "Pretty Face" by Lucy Parker

Page count: 264 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

In her follow-up to one of my favourite books of last year (Act Like It), Lucy Parker returns to the London theatre world, this time introducing us to acclaimed director Luc Savage, who has spent a considerable amount of his time and huge amounts of money restoring a theatre his family has a generations long connection to. He's planning to celebrate the reopening of the theatre with a prestigious play called 1553, featuring character studies of Mary I, Elizabeth I and poor doomed Jane Grey. Unfortunately, his first choice for Mary I was his girlfriend of eight years, industry darling Margo Roy, but they recently broke up after realising they'd both been prioritising their careers for years, rather than each other. To make matters worse, Margo went off and almost instantly married an Italian opera singer, going off on an extended honey moon, leaving Luc with no choice but to hire a hypochondriac melodramatic diva instead. Then his first choice for Elizabeth I goes and breaks both her ankles, and he's forced to recast her too.

His casting agent and one of the theatre's top investors are leaning on him to give TV bombshell Lily Lamprey a chance to audition. She's constantly in the tabloids and hiring her would certainly ensure a boost in ticket sales for the theatre. Blond, curvaceous, with a porn starlet voice, Ms. Lamprey has been the resident serial adulteress vixen on costume drama/soap opera Knightsbridge for the last four years, cursing the fact that she let herself get tied into a long-running contract and playing into everyone's expectations for much longer than she wanted to. Her looks and her breathy sex kitten voice has made her the victim of casual sexism her entire career and while she's willing to kill for a chance to prove her acting chops on the London stage, she's none too optimistic about her chances, having been told about Luc's preconceived notions of her from an intern who happened to be serving tea while the arrogant Mr Savage was considering Lily's audition tape. Nevertheless, though she believes it to be a long shot, she's not going to waste the opportunity and ends up impressing Luc despite himself. He believes that with training, careful direction and some serious voice coaching, there is a spark to Lily's acting that could turn into something truly special.

It quickly becomes obvious that there is a strong attraction between Luc and Lily, which both of them resists as with the close working relationship, it could spell disaster for both the play and their reputations. Luc's parents are still absolutely besotted with one another, while his older brother recently divorced a nineteen-year-old. The press is constantly inventing fictitious rebound romances for him after Margo's leap into matrimony right after breaking up with him. They'd love to be able to blame the whole split on him. Lily, on the other hand has a number of reasons, both personal and professional as to why she doesn't want to fall for her director.

Herself the result of an adulterous affair between her middle-aged politician father and a highly ambitious singer, Lily has been a favoured victim of the tabloid press for most of her life. With a mother known to use both her looks and sex appeal to further her career in a series of short-lived romantic relationships, Lily certainly doesn't want to be an apple from the same tree. She has three rules for herself 1) No significantly older men (she's 26, Luc's around 40), 2) No one in a committed relationship or just out of one (Luc's famously on the rebound after years with the same woman) and 3) No one she works with or for. So in effect, Luc is the triple threat of her deal breakers.

Despite all this and the professional distance they try to affect, it's quite clear to everyone in the production that Luc is rather besotted with Lily, and she's not unaffected by him. That the new editor of tabloid paper London Celebrity has some sort of personal vendetta against Luc doesn't help (the editor's grandfather apparently lost a fortune to Luc's grandfather - a rather shady sort), absolutely everything that can be scrutinised about the rehearsals and production is being portrayed in the very worst light. When Luc is called to the hospital because one of his family members is urgently admitted, Lily doesn't even hesitate, but drops everything to go comfort him. After that, what has been rather obvious to all their colleagues becomes gossip fodder for everyone.

While I suspect I will still turn to Act Like It when I want a witty and comforting re-read, I'm not entirely sure that Pretty Face doesn't in fact have the edge, and is an even better book. In the former book, there is a very annoying ongoing subplot involving Lainie's worthless toad of an ex-boyfriend and the ending goes a bit off the rails with the melodrama. It may be frothier and sparkier, but in some ways, I liked the serious undertones of this one a lot too. There are a number of reasons why Luc and Lily shouldn't date, starting with the power dynamic brought on by the age difference and him being her boss. There's Lily's desire to prove to the world that she's a talented actress and that unlike her mother, she doesn't advance her career through sexual favours.

Luc has always been incredibly focused on the theatre and his career, which is why he and Margo grew apart and realised they just didn't love each other even half as much as they loved their work. Lily has, throughout her life, been reminded that pretty much everyone she cares about has put something else ahead of her. She can't really visit her father's home when her stepmother is there, as she is always a visible and painful reminder of her father's adultery. Both her father and her mother seem to only have time for her when business deals or tour engagements don't interfere. Even Lily's best friend and roommate, Trix, more or less completely abandoned her for a while, when she was dating a controlling and emotionally abusive guy. So getting involved with a driven, career-minded man (who also ticks all the other deal-breaker boxes she has) seems like it might spell disaster for Lily emotionally, not just for her future in the industry.

While it's got a more serious undertone, and the last third deals with Lily going through a serious loss and needing time to find herself and get her emotions sorted out, this book is also extremely funny throughout and kept making me laugh loudly and highlight lines on my e-reader so I'd remember them later. The banter is excellent, not just between Luc and Lily. There are a lot of genuinely supportive relationships, with cast members, family and friends. I especially liked that Margo turned out not to be a jealous harpy, but rather quite an understanding and supportive friend to Lily. Fellow Cannonballer and romance fan Ellepkay mentioned in her review how good it is to read about adults, behaving like proper grown-ups throughout, and I absolutely agree with her. I was also delighted by the cameo by Richard and Lainey from Act Like It, as it's nice to see them after their own HEA.

In Pretty Face, Lucy Parker shows that last year's novel, one of the most popular on the CBR in 2016, wasn't just a one-off. She's a very good and consistent writer, who's rocketed onto my pre-order list. I am eagerly awaiting her next release and more books from the London theatre world.

Judging a book by its cover: As Luc is described in the book as a 1950s Gregory Peck, I'm not entirely sure that the male cover model does him justice. The female model seems to fit pretty well with Lily's description, though, and I love the affectionate and sweet feel of the embrace on the cover. It makes me smile, just like this book did. I can't really ask for more than that.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.