Star Struck: A Lesbian Romance by Mia Archer

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Tabitha Cartwright became a teen sensation starring in a popular superhero TV serial. Now a young adult, she's in the process of transitioning onto the big screen. There are rumours about her and an actor and a studio wants to cash in on the interest in the possible romance of the two former child stars by making a cheesy romance with the two in the leading roles. Amy is an extra on the set of the movie for the meet cute scene. She's had a crush on Tabitha forever but knows to keep her head down if she wants to have anything like a career in the movies. Except that Tabitha singles her out to hang out. Amy is surprised to discover that Tabitha's sexuality is one of the better kept secrets about her.

As Tabitha and Amy find more and more in common, the movie is quickly getting all but derailed.

We wish we'd got a better sense of what the two leading ladies looked like. We know Tabitha has a radiant smile, but little else. Also, both Tabitha and Amy behave like irresponsible teenagers most of the time which, given their backgrounds didn't quite jell.

Tabitha and Amy have great chemistry in the first couple of scenes but it doesn't pop the same way later. Even the relationship didn't really grow. In fact, though there was an immediate U-haul, the relationship didn't quite move past the initial awkward stages since they never got around being completely emotionally open and vulnerable with each other. Amy in particular was rather unmindful and uncaring about the situations she was putting Tabitha in. She also didn't have any real appreciation of Tabitha. We didn't get the sense that Amy actually saw Tabitha. And that was rather sad. The onus of making the relationship a relationship lay entirely with Tabitha and though she seemed to put in everything, it never seemed like her efforts were returned in any way.

With the way things are between them in the end, this is more HFN than HEA unless Amy does a whole lot of maturing emotionally rather quickly -- something that we don't see happening.

This book constantly teetered on the possibility of moving to magnificence. At every point we hoped that it would move into being more detailed, have greater depth and explore more dimensions in characterisations and the relationship -- but that never happened. As someone once said (think it was Somerset Maugham) people don't write as they want to, they write as they can. We just wish there was more to this one, though.

Overall, this is an okay read in the short reads niche.

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