⭐⭐⭐★
Georgia Beers is one of the most popular lesfic authors and we really, really want to like her books but often feel that we could do with more of the madness of love in her books. She writes really well and has us invested in the relationships, but usually one of her characters ends up being a little too pragmatic for our requirement of crazy romance. This one, though, he's left us borderline angry and quite sad.
Sophie James, now 29, has been in the public eye as an internationally famous singer since she was in her teens. Her long time manager, Ray, has just died leaving her quite shattered. A couple of drunken public appearances have her recording label concerned and Dana Landon is appointed as her new manager-cum-publicist. Sophie finds herself unaccountably attracted to the openly gay Dana and a personal relationship develops between them, slowly but surely. In the meanwhile, Sophie is also trying to change her sound and her image to something edgier than the Adult Contemporary love ballads niche that she is stuck in facing severe resistance from the label.
The pacing of the book is good. The chemistry between the MCs is excellent.
Sophie is achingly sweet, sincere and vulnerable.
Dana is the problem for us (hence the borderline anger).
It hurts us when one person in a relationship is more invested and going out on a limb entirely without getting an equal response from the other. In this book, Sophie is all in while Dana is skimming the surface. Dana is consistently emotionally lacking when it comes to Sophie and shows a steady (and alarming) lack of spine when it comes to standing up for and with Sophie or standing up against her ex. Dana was too lacking for someone like Sophie.
Either consciously or sub-consciously, Beers has written Sophie as completely emotionally deprived so it is possible that the tiny bits Dana offers are actually more than she's ever got. And this thought is just so, so sad.
Recommendation? Yeah, okay, maybe.
⭐⭐⭐★
