This is a celebrity-journalist romcom that leans into the com aspect so hard that almost all characters are stereotypical caricatures.
Honey Diamond is a mega-pop star. She is incredibly talented, famous and good looking. (Hello Taylor Swift). Her mother was also famous and she’d brought up Honey in a protected bubble. Margaret (Meg) Rutherton is a kind of a journalist who runs a trashy and frankly, salacious website SelebSecrets which seems to have a single aim of being nasty to celebrities.
Honey isn’t exactly in the closet but has never discussed her sexuality in public. Meg (on whom she has a crush for like forever), via SelebSecrets, is determined to ‘expose’ Honey as a lesbian. Because of some unseemly and underserved gossip, Honey writes a song about her sexuality and insists that it should be a part of her new album. This is against the advice of her mother and manager. She also (against advice) decides to give an interview about the song and about her sexuality. It just so happens that the selected magazine has recruited Meg to replace their erstwhile correspondent, Margaret, and Meg turns up for the interview.
Like we said, this book is filled with over-the-top caricaturised comedic characters and moments. Not that this detracts from the fun and funny parts. All characters except the two MCs are caricatures. Initially, Honey is also made out of the Disney Princess template but as the book progresses, she somehow makes her way into your heart with is purity.
Honey is naïve, innocent, positive, playful, honest, open, vulnerable and totally loveable. Meg, initially is not likeable. As we move into the second half and spend more time in Meg’s head, she moves from ‘not likeable’ to ‘dislikeable’ to ‘ohmygod, she’s quite terrible’. There is absolutely nothing to make Meg anywhere near a good match for Honey. So, while Honey kept us engaged and rooting or her happy ending, Meg made us want to DNF. We hate it when one of MCs is awesome and the other is awful. While we want awesome to find love we want that love to be the awful – so the HEA doesn’t make us feel completely good.
We want to give Honey a 5+ rating but Meg goes into the negative on the scale. So we’ll have to settle with saying this book is okay.
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