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If you think you can handle the subject matter, I HIGHLY recommend checking this out and I personally cannot wait to read whatever else Ava Wilder puts out next.
But despite withstanding the heat of the scandal of their leaked private life, the pair split after less than a year of dating. Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/ Ballantine for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my pure honesty. Okay, the premise: A talented Hollywood starlet and a reclusive A-lister enter into a fake relationship . I also loved that Grey wasn’t at all having the “I can fix him” attitude towards Ethan, but was still fully supportive of his healing. It's the kind of book that's going to linger on my mind for awhile, and I'm curious to see how I feel about it months from now.The descriptions really painted a picture without over-explaining, the pacing was wonderful, and the dialogue was witty and realistic. It is also worth noting that the Palm Springs scene in this is quite possibly my my absolute favorite sex scene of all time? He complains a lot about how his father was awful and he wanted to be a good father for his kids, but then, they were not part of his decision to get into therapy and rehab. This was just so beautiful, and funny, and heartbreaking, and angsty, and steamy, and all the best things.
Renata, on the other hand, was loud and glamorous in an eighties Business Bitch sort of way, with a cloud of teased red hair surrounded by an even larger cloud of Marlboro Light smoke. What starts out with Ethan trying to ignore Grey’s presence in his house each week, eventually intensifies.
It was something that I never thought I'd do, or something that I would hold off on for a few years yet. But even though he wants to be better for her, he knows he has to work on him first, and I love seeing that in the book. There are some similar issues going on with Ethan and the hero to Funny You Should Ask, but in that book you get to spend large amounts of time with later Gabe and see that he really has changed and got a handle on stuff. Between his high-profile divorce, struggles with drinking, and grief over the death of his longtime creative partner and best friend, Ethan has slowly let himself fade into the background. I deeply felt sad and hardly breathed after the author threw the entire angsty drama bomb on my lap!
After reading the blurb and being enchanted by this fantastic cover, I was so hopeful to read something tempting, entertaining with Hollywood criticism of fake relationship trope! Over the years Grey had known her, Renata had kicked the Lights, but still had problems with volume control. With this witty, seductive romance, debut author Wilder transports readers to the flashy world of Hollywood. A gossip-inducing affair with a gorgeous actress might be just the ticket, even if it’s the last thing he wants to do.Sure, she’d worked a little in between seasons—a bad studio slasher here, a Hallmark Christmas movie there—but her last few auditions had gone nowhere. This book had everything I love—fake dating, the only one bed trope, and our main characters are two Hollywood actors. Trigger warnings for this book include: addiction, alcoholism, drug use, depression, death of a friend (off-page), and grief. Every Hollywood business seems to profit from these fears, claiming to have the right connections, and when everything turns to suffering anyway, there's always the endless supply of alcohol and/or Botox, to ease the pain, if only briefly.
I felt for her going from a relatively anonymous existence to one where her every move was suddenly splashed everywhere online.In the end, this wasn't quite as powerful as it could've been, but there's a whole lot that I loved. Two stars are trying to kick start their careers after a dry spell, so they agree to fake date for six months. It was also fueled by the misscommunication, or rather them not really communicating and it just kept going back and forth, so the ending dragged a bit for me.
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