The summer after her first year of college, teen starlet Emma Crawford returns home to Manhattan to prepare for the role of a lifetime—and play career matchmaker to her friends. When Emma’s search for an assistant leads her to the wide-eyed Brittany Smith, Emma sees the big screen in the girl’s future. And because Emma knows best, she’s sure that steering Brittany onto the right path is all she needs to do to make her a star—even if Brittany doesn’t know it yet.
Emma’s plans start to unravel, however, when professional soccer player Liam Price re-enters her life. Not only is Liam her former best friend’s older brother, but he’s gorgeous, smart, and has no problem pointing out the (totally exaggerated) flaws in Emma’s plans. But as Emma comes in close contact with the darker side of Hollywood, she starts to question the glamorous world she’s always known and realizes her role in it needs to change—if she can find the courage to go off script.
This book was so pleasantly surprising! This is the first book I've read by Kate Watson and it just made me want to go back to her other novels and experience those characters/world that she so perfectly created.
The writing style was very good. It was easy to picture everything in the setting she wanted to establish - which in this case was Hollywood. Reading her characters, the events, the thought processes through every little action, it was so easy to imagine the same things playing out in real life Hollywood. The writing style just felt very natural.
The characters were one of my favorite parts. While at first Emma, the main character, felt distant we began growing with her as the story progressed and it felt so right, like that was how Watson had always meant it to feel. Emma was so frustrating at times but again, we learn to sympathize with her. And that just made everything seem to realistic. Especially because each character was slightly unlikeable. They each had bad parts of themselves right along with the good. You could almost understand them but still dislike them anyway. And I think that's how people are in real life to so the fact that Watson was able to embody it so flawlessly in her characters was so great to read. Especially since it's so rare to see in books - especially within even our main characters.
Every character had such interesting background stories because of this complexity within each one. They weren't stagnant. Even the side characters had such rich stories that made you wish you could follow them and see their development, even if it becomes more of watching them spiral. For example, Harlan was such an interesting character and I found myself wanting to read so much more about him even when I started to really not like him towards the end (which was purposely done by the author) because he was just that dynamic like most of the other characters are.
The absolute best part of this book however was the complexity and different layers with so much complexity Watson builds onto not only the characters and the plot lines. The book wasn't even that long but it managed to pack in such incredibly elaborate stories in a very natural and concise way so that it didn't feel too complicated to read and it was easily understandable. Because of this, when we got to the climax where everything 'exploded' so to say, it just fit so well and made so much sense that it just added that element of being realistic.
Along with that, I think Watson very skillfully managed not to spell everything out for the reader but instead made deeper plot lines easy to catch on to by yourself, you got to slowly be shown small hints to deeper issues which you could make conclusions up through your own pace and accord. And I think that just made the experience of reading the book that much more immersive. There were so many important topics discussed such as insecurities, alcoholism, abuse, the effect of familial (specifically parental) relationships with their children.
She also was very good at spreading out background information very nicely so it didn't feel info dumpy but it didn't feel like everything was too spaced out. I never felt bored and instead loved the perfect amount of detail and subtle hints to bigger plot lines given at just the right time. The backstories were integrated so perfectly to correspond to the present times. It helped highlight thoughts or what was currently going on in Emma's head as well as just filled in the reader into the world of the characters before the start of this book which made everything seem that much more understandable and made the world created feel like it was real almost.
Overall, I was very invested in the book. There was this overarching feeling of dread; like you know everything is just going to blow up, we're heading to this one event that will send everything crashing down as we know it. But it was the good type of feeling you get in tv shows that center around drama like Gossip Girl and shows of that nature. I was always wanting to read more and stay in that world.
One very small detail that I loved so much was that there was no senseless girl on girl hatred/fighting. Emma and Brittany didn't hate each other, they understood each other even when coming from different backgrounds and I loved that. Often, books add girl animosity for no reason at all and it really makes me not like the book because I hate seeing two girls at odds with each other just for the pure fact that they're both girls within the same circle and 'jealousy' just must be a factor. But it wasn't here and that was so refreshing and nice to see. Even with Vic where everything between the dynamic with her and Emma was stemmed from more complex and intricate reasons than just 'competition'. Even though Victoria ended up being a character I really didn't like, I didn't like her characterization, her motivations or anything about her really. She was a small downfall of the book for me as I wished she was more likable.
The romantic chemistry was so good too. It was a slow burn and it drove me wild in the best way possible. Liam Price found a place in my heart and I loved the way he and Emma mirrored each other, the way they brought out such private parts of the other out. It was amazing to experience and I wished we could see just a bit more of them because I loved them just that much. The romance was so subtle and by no means the main plot of the story but because it was so faint, it made me so giddy to see little hints of it through glances or small touches. Plus it wasn't overwhelming as to distract from the other equally as important plots or relationships (friendships and family) explored through the story. In fact, while I loved the romance, I think the best plot we explored was the relationship between Emma, her brother and her father. To see Emma's growth as a person and the way her family, particularly Harlan changed alongside her was so heartbreaking but very important to read.
Honestly, this book was a strong contender for 5 stars. Unfortunately, it fell a bit short near the end. Not to say it wasn't a good ending and that I didn't love to see the big final breakthrough in Emma's fears right before the epilogue but it definitely could have been much more explosive and thought provoking than it was. The story throughout was predictable (especially if you read the summary in the back), however that isn't always bad if the ending is executed right. But the end felt very rushed. The endings of each character felt like a movie summarization with the freeze frames which didn't leave me quite as satisfied as I wished. Plus, throughout the novel, Watson danced around the central topic and the character that embodied it, I suppose. There were several hints and even more education and experience in that topic that Emma went through first hand. However, near the end she just kind of spelled out what it was and what happened in one paragraph. It really took away from the story and I feel like I would have enjoyed it better for us to have discovered it slowly alongside Emma little by little with maybe even a flashback to help us feel the impact as much as we could instead of Emma telling us exactly what happened with just a few sentences and then moving on.
The story covered the serious, important and so relevant topic but instead of fully exploring it and having it be as thought provoking as it could be, it felt like we were just leading up to nothing. Like a firework sizzling up in the air with no boom at the end. It could have been a much more powerful book than it was. Which is very disappointing.
However, though that is an influential reason for my rating, it doesn't completely take away the rest of the book which I very much enjoyed and cared about. I loved the complexity, the multilayers and the realistic nature of the characters and plot.
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