CBR18 Book 37: "Let's Make a Scene" by Laura Wood

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Cynthie Taylor needs some positive publicity, fast. Once it was revealed that not only was the film director she recently broke up with married, but his wife is pregnant, former good girl Cynthie is now seen as a manipulative home wrecker (the cheating director is obviously not getting the same negative press, what with being a man and all).

Fired from a high-profile superhero movie, Cynthie may have found a new and unexpected career rescue. The writer and director of Cynthie's first-ever movie, A Lady of Quality, the one who made her a breakout star, wants to make a sequel, as in the thirteen years since it was made, it has become a cult classic on streaming, and now the funding is in place to make a follow-up. Most of the original team will be in place to make it, and filming in the UK will take Cynthie away from the most aggressive press attention. It would also mean working closely with Jack Turner-Jones again, a man Cynthie has a complicated past with. 

Thirteen years ago, Cynthie was a relatively unknown actress selected for her role in A Lady of Quality in a series of auditions. Jack Turner-Jones was the son of two acclaimed and beloved British actors, who had very high career expectations for him. He's worried she's going to ruin the whole movie with her stage fright and inexperience. Cynthie overhears him complaining to one of the directors that he wants her fired, and finds his arrogance infuriating. They start off on the wrong foot and keep getting more antagonistic as the shoot progresses. The studio execs, however, want Cynthie and Jack to pretend to be a couple to drum up publicity for the movie. So while they privately loathe each other, they not only have to pretend to fall in love in the movie they're filming, but off-screen as well. 

Now Cynthie's PR people think it would be very beneficial for her reputation if she rekindled this fake romance with Jack, which will also create advance publicity and excitement for A Lady of Quality 2. Jack Turner-Jones is up for contract negotiations for the next season of Blood/Lust, and wants to make sure his character isn't killed off. Fake dating Cynthie will raise his media profile considerably. Since the world already thinks they used to love each other back in the day, selling the relationship now should be easier. There is the added complication that the streaming service that's funding the movie wants there to be a behind-the-scenes documentary accompanying the release, so Cynthie and Jack would have to pretend to be affectionate a lot more of the time.   

Career-wise, Cynthie is now basically where Jack once hoped he would end up. She's starred in a number of prestigious films, been Oscar-nominated, won several other major acting awards, and until she was unfortunate enough to get romantically involved with a man who chose not to divulge that he was married, she was box office gold. Jack, on the other hand, is a constant disappointment to his exacting parents, being perfectly happy as an ensemble player in a supernatural TV show about vampires. 

As is the case with every fake relationship story in romance, especially because this is ALSO a second-chance romance, there's no way that Cynthie and Jack don't fall madly in love with each other. The book alternates between the present day and thirteen years ago, so the readers first get to see the older actors meeting again (and being instantly smitten with one another), but also get the whole complicated backstory of how the filming of the first movie and their fake relationship back then ended so catastrophically. 

One of my favourite things in Under Your Spell was the supporting cast of characters, like Clem's mothers and sisters, and Theo's micro-managing personal assistant. Here, Cynthie has a wonderful team of people taking care of her, including her best friend Hannah, who has been her personal assistant from the start. While Jack's parents are the absolute worst, he, too, has a lot of supportive friends, and then there's the crew of the movies, who also provide a lot of entertainment.

I literally bought this for my e-reader as soon as I finished Under Your Spell, and ended up liking it even more, possibly because a lot of different scenes in this reminded me of several of Lucy Parker's London Celebrities books, which remain some of my favourite contemporary romances. There were also references throughout to several of my favourite rom-coms, including While You Were Sleeping. Laura Wood is an author I will be eagerly searching for new releases from, based on the two books I read these last few days. If she writes another one as good as these, she may be a new auto-buy author for me.

Judging a book by its cover: This one has a much more traditional romance cover than Under Your Spell, and it gratifies me to see that the little cartoon people are actually wearing outfits as described in the book (that is so often not the case). 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR17 Book 70: "In a Second" by Kate Canterbary

Page count: 505 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

This was an ARC from the author. I am very grateful, but my opinions are my own. 

Audrey Saunders has not seen her former boyfriend, Jude Bellessi, since he showed up at the church, only moments before she was due to get married, to ask her to run away with him instead. Because of a whole host of reasons, Audrey couldn't tell Jude why she was getting married, and why she broke up with him in the first place and moved across the country. About a decade later, she certainly didn't expect him to show up at their high school reunion, but there he is, larger than life and handsomer than ever.

While once he was the motorcycle-driving bad boy her parents disapproved of, now Jude is an aerospace engineer and single dad, trying to gain sole custody of his son (it's complicated). He is attending the reunion because he needs a pretty big favour from Audrey, and figures she owes him for the way their relationship crashed and burned all those years ago. Jude's mother was dying of cancer, and he may have lied a whole lot and claimed that he and Audrey were not only happily reunited, but were due to get married. Of course, now Jude's mum is fully recovered and delighted that she will get to plan her son's wedding to the woman he couldn't forget.

Matrimony did not work out for Audrey, and she has no intention of ever getting married again. She does feel like she has a debt to repay, however, so she agrees to play fake fiancée to Jude for a week. After that, she never needs to see Jude again, and she'll go celebrate one of her best friends' weddings. Jude plans to wait a couple of months, then he will tell his mother that they broke up, and that will be that. Neither of them had taken into account flight cancellations, a cross-country road trip, or being trapped in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, in the most depressing motel room you could possibly imagine - which obviously only has one bed. 

This is the third book in the Friendship, Rhode Island series, which all have heroes and heroines who have to go through a fake engagement for complicated reasons. Jamie, who is both one of Audrey's best friends and also a fellow teacher, just laughs hysterically at how optimistic Audrey is about this being a brief transaction, after which she and Jude will never see each other again. By now, it's quite clear that fake engagement equals an eventual happy ever after for all of these women (who all became friends because they worked at the same school). 

All of the books in this series are long; it is very rare that a romance needs to be longer than 400 pages. I thought the plot dragged out for too long in In a Jam, and I thought the plot dragged out too long in this one, too. I understand that there is a whole lot of angst to get through on both Audrey and Jude's part. One of the reasons the book is clearly so long is that Canterbary seems to want the readers to not only get the main romance, but also time to reconnect with characters from previous books. Which is fine, but I'm not sure we needed as much of it as here, and I'm not sure I would care for it much if this was the first book in the series that I picked up. I also don't know if we needed as many complications and obstacles thrown in their way as Audrey and Jude have.

Going forward, I'm now very curious whether Canterbary intends to write a romance starring Jamie, who seems very attachment-averse and keeps taking part in polyamorous orgies. She doesn't seem like the sort of person who will want to settle down with one (or several) people, but I would love to be surprised. What I want most of all right now, and the author seems to be heavily setting up for, is a book about Ruth, one of the sisters of Ryan from In a Rush. She's a prominent supporting character in this one, and has clearly got up to some shenanigans which may lead to a HEA eventually. 

Judging a book by its cover: This is my favourite of the Friendship, Rhode Island covers so far. It doesn't hurt that it's pretty much all shades of purple. The violets are a lovely touch, once it becomes clear what the colour and flower mean to Audrey. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 51: "In a Jam" by Kate Canterbary

Page count: 474 pages

Audio book length: 15 hrs 53 minutes

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR17 Bingo: I (A book title beginning with I)

Official plot summary:

When Shay Zucconi’s step-grandmother died, she left Shay a tulip farm—under two conditions.

First, Shay has to move home to the small town of Friendship, Rhode Island. Second—and most problematic, since her fiancé just called off the wedding—Shay must be married within one year.

Marriage is the last thing in the world Shay wants but she’ll do anything to save the only real home she’s ever known.

Noah Barden loved Shay Zucconi back in high school. Not that he ever told her. He was too shy, too awkward, too painfully uncool to ask out the beautiful, popular girl.

A lifetime later, Noah is a single dad to his niece and has his hands full running the family business. That old crush is the farthest thing from his mind.

Until Shay returns to their hometown.

So, I had pretty much decided that I wasn't going to review this book, because my review backlog was massive in the first place, and while it was a perfectly fine book, it wasn't one of the most memorable or squee-inducing Canterbary romances I've read. But then the CBR17 Bingo came around, and this was the only book I had left unreviewed that started with an I. So back onto the review list it went.

Shay is literally putting on her wedding dress and getting ready to say her vows, when her fiancé calls her from his car and breaks up with her (he doesn't even have the decency to do it face to face). Naturally, she's pretty devastated, but after a few weeks of wallowing, seems to realise that she's better off without him. 

Then unexpectedly, she inherits a farm from one of the only adults who were really there for her during what was clearly a turbulent adolescence and back to Friendship, Rhode Island, she goes, because she can't keep crashing with her friends forever. 

Shortly after her return, she reconnects with Noah Barden, probably her only real friend when she stayed with her step-grandmother for a while and attended high school in Friendship. Noah used to be an outcast, overweight and occasionally bullied, but the best times of his week were always driving Shay to school and the many private conversations they had, away from everyone else. Now he's tall, handsome and seems rather angry with Shay. He also seems to own pretty much all the farmland surrounding Shay's newly inherited property, with dairy farming, jam and preserve production, as well as baking facilities (his rather gruff way of flirting with her involves a lot of feeding her, and leaving her delicious bread - sign me up). 

As well as running a very extensive farming enterprise, Noah has his hands full with his niece, Gennie (pronounced Jennie, which I wouldn't have known if I hadn't listened to the audio,) whom he has sole custody of, because his sister is in prison and the baby daddy is dead. Because of years of very unstable living conditions, the girl has massive trust issues, wants to be a pirate, and certainly swears like one. She needs to improve her manners and catch up on most areas of schooling, or she'll be held back in school after the summer. Luckily, Shay is a teacher and the plot moppet loves her pretty much at first sight. 

This book did not need to be 474 pages long; a standard 384 would have been just fine. While the central romance between Shay and Noah is fine, and Shay establishes herself as the ideal step-aunt to the little girl within days of meeting her, there were just too many pages of Shay being extremely down on herself and self-pitying to the point of ridiculousness. It didn't get as bad as in The Love Haters, where the heroine's extreme body issues almost made me quit reading the book. While Shay hasn't had the easiest life and has been disappointed a few times, the obvious love of her fierce and loyal friend group back in Boston, as well as Noah and Gennie's clearly both being mad about her, long before she figuratively wakes up and sees the hot farmer for who he truly is, should have made it abundantly clear to her that she isn't all alone in the world, and she is plenty lovable if she would just let people in.

If this had been a bit shorter, and Shay had been a bit less frustrating, it could probably have been one of my favourite of Canterbary's. books.  As it is, it's merely fine. Having heard a bunch about Shay and her jam farmer in Emme's book, In a Rush, it was fun to read this and see their romance developing, though. 

Judging a book by its cover: While I love the lovely turquoisey teal background, basically just spreading out some raspberries and taking a photo of it isn't exactly great art. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 47: "Partners in Crime" by Alisha Rai

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Buzzword Cover Challenge 25: Skyline

CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge: Diversity 

Yet again resorting to the official plot summary, because I finished this in mid-April and I just cannot remember all the of details of the plot anymore:

At thirty-five, with a stable job as an accountant, Mira Chaudhary wants nothing more than to find a boring man to spend the rest of her life with. Having had enough excitement in her younger days and desperately trying to escape her dysfunctional past, she turns to a matching app specializing in Indian American singles to help her find someone to settle down with.

Enter Naveen Desai. An English professor with an uneventful, normal, and—dare she say it, boring—life, Naveen is perfect.

But just when things are going well, Mira receives news that her aunt has died. Suddenly, a trip to Las Vegas to settle her aunt’s affairs turns into a mad dash to escape kidnappers, evade art thieves, and consorting with hackers who can decipher just what it was Mira’s aunt was involved with. Mira just hopes that Naveen isn’t chased away by the very same life of “excitement” that she’s been trying to get away from. But maybe, over the course of one wild night, Mira and Naveen will find the love connection that neither expected.

Mira is trying to be traditional and respectable, to distance herself from her family's less than savoury past. Naveen is trying to help his grandfather keep his lawyer's practice. The two of them have a past, and Mira broke up with Naveen via text message. Not exactly classy. He's right to be pissed off at her.

However, when they end up drugged and abducted together to Las Vegas, they try to figure out what the bad guys want from Mira's dad and aunt's pasts, before bad things happen to them (or people they care about, like Naveen's grandfather). They are forced to work together to stay ahead of their pursuers, and over the course of a whirlwind adventure in Vegas, they also get a chance to reconnect, reevaluate their past relationship and see each other honestly as the people they really are now.

Unfortunately, I don't remember a lot of details particularly clearly, but at the same time, I also don't remember anything that annoyed me while reading it, either. It was a fun read, and I finished it in less than 48 hours. 

Judging a book by its cover: Standard grumble about cartoon cover trend - but I do appreciate that both the characters on the cover look approximately as described in the story, and the scene in question, complete with fancy car and evening wear, does actually take place in the story. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR15 Book 83: "Forget Me Not" by Julie Soto

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Ama Torres is an excellent wedding planner, who really gives her all to make sure the weddings she arranges go off without a hitch. However, personally, she doesn't believe in marriage or in relationships that really last a lifetime. Probably because her mother has been married so many times (Ama has arranged a lot of her weddings). Now she has a whole host of former step-siblings, some of which she works with, others who she can rope in when she needs a favour. Despite Ama usually doing fairly small, intimate weddings, she is contracted to arrange the wedding of a famous Instagram star (a woman Ama sees as a personal role model). It will be Ama's biggest job yet, and her former employer is making things difficult by booking up a lot of the available vendors on the date in question.

Another complication is that the brides have contracted Elliot Bloom to do the flowers for the wedding. Ama and Elliot have a history - which ended when Ama broke Elliot's heart several years previous. Now she's going to have to arrange the biggest, most high-profile wedding of her career while working closely with a man who most likely hates her. 

Romances starring commitment-phobic wedding planners seem to be a subgenre of its own. Ama (not going to tell you her full name, but it's a great one) has a lot of issues with relationships, mainly due to her mother's many many marriages. She prefers simple flings until she meets Elliot, who is the complete opposite. When Elliot falls for someone, it is forever - which doesn't work out so well for either of them.

This is a really fun second chance romance, where about half of the story is told in flashbacks, so we see the beginning of Ama and Elliot's relationship, and discover what finally went wrong between them. The present-day story, with Ama ultra-competently finding solutions to all of the wealthy brides' many demands, even being sabotaged by her former boss, is a lot of fun too, although it becomes painfully clear that Ama needs a ton of therapy. She is far too much of a workaholic, and then there are all the commitment issues because of her mom's serial monogamy. I would have liked there to be some kind of acknowledgment that at some point, after the story's end, she would deal with some of these issues, to make sure she doesn't get cold feet and hurt poor Elliot again.

I know Ms. Soto has another romance coming out in the summer of 2024, but nothing about what it will be about. I hope she at some point in the future writes a book about Ama's beautiful and funny photographer stepsister, because she seems like she would be a great heroine. 

Judging a book by its cover: The US cover for this makes it seem like Reylo fan fiction because the guy on the cover is yet another Adam Driver look-alike. The UK cover has both characters looking far too cutesy (although Ama is described as looking a lot like a teenager). I don't think either cover really fits the book very well. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 30: "Happy Place" by Emily Henry

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR15 Bingo: Adulthood

15-word review: Harriet and Wyn broke up months ago, but can't tell their friends. Sexual tension follows.

Official book description:

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.

They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?

I read this book at the start of May, so apologies if this review isn't as witty and informative as some of the others I occasionally write. Ms. Henry deserves a great review for her achievement, but I've just let my review backlog get bigger and bigger, so this is what she gets instead.

I picked this book for the "Adulthood" square of Cannonball Bingo because all of the characters in Happy Place, not just Harriet and Wyn, are struggling with both having to be adults and accept that sometimes things change irrevocably, and want to hold on to their happier youthful days. Their friends Sabrina, Cleo, Parth, and Kimmy are just as devastated that Sabrina's rich father is selling the cottage they've shared so many good times in, and as their last week progresses, it's becoming very clear that Harriet and Wyn aren't the only ones keeping big secrets. 

Harriet has always dreamed of becoming a surgeon, but her residency in multiple hospitals is wearing her down. Wyn was miserable living with her even before he moved away months ago to take care of his grieving mother after the death of his father. So now she lives alone and barely seems to function between her various hospital shifts. Not that she's going to say any of that to Sabrina and Cleo, her best friends since college, or Parth, Sabrina's boyfriend and Wyn's former roommate, nor Kimmy, Cleo's lovely partner. The cottage in Maine is the place Harriet pictures when she's close to having a panic attack or a depressive episode, she's not going to sully her last week ever there with depressing truths about real life and struggling.

Because it's their last week there, and Sabrina and Parth have something big planned, neither Harriet nor Wyn is going to burst their bubble by revealing that they're no longer together. It would spoil the brief time they have left there. Of course, they're not the only ones lying through their teeth about how things really are, and refusing to tell their friends what their lives are really like at the moment. So many secrets bubbling under the surface, waiting to pop. 

Happy Place, like People We Meet on Vacation is told in dual timelines. The book switches between the present, at the cottage in Maine, where the friends are spending one last week enjoying their dream location, and the past, where we find out how Harriet, Sabrina, and Cleo met, how they got to know Parth and Wyn, and how Cleo later introduced the group to Kimmy. Slowly, ever so gradually, we finally see how Harriet and Wyn's relationship went from being each other's perfect partners, to people who struggle to even look at each other. At the same time, the sections in the present make it very obvious that while they broke up, Harriet and Wyn still love each other and that their attraction for one another still burns very strong. I liked this a lot more than People We Meet on Vacation (my least favourite book of all Ms. Henry has written - it's perfectly fine, it just didn't resonate with me the way her others do). Nevertheless, the jumping back and forth all the time occasionally got tiresome, which is why I'm deducting half a star from its near-perfect rating. 

Judging a book by its cover: The publishing industry wants you to believe that Emily Henry writes light-hearted rom-coms, despite the fact that all of her books tend to feature some pretty damaged people trying to find their own place in the world, as well as love. This bubblegum pink cover with people frolicking merrily in the water very much does not match the contents within in the slightest, with two deeply insecure individuals desperately trying to keep it together so as not to ruin their friends' happiness. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.