WELCOME BACK~
It's another BCT...and today is FREE DAY!
And don't forget to check in with my best friends at the links below!
Today, I'll be talking up a book that I finished up a few days ago.
ABOUT THE BOOK~
From a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow comes a charming and disarming tale of Los Angeles that navigates the fringe of celebrity excess from the other side of Sunset Boulevard.Jess Dunne is third-generation Hollywood, but her star on the boulevard has yet to materialize. Sure, she’s got a Santa Monica address and a working actress roommate, but with her nowhere barista job in a town that acknowledges zeroes only as a dress size, she’s a dead girl walking.
Enter Jess’s mother—a failed actress who puts the strange in estrangement. She dives headlong into her daughter’s downward spiral, forcing Jess to muster all her spite and self-preservation to snag a career upgrade.
As a personal assistant for a famous (and secretly agoraphobic) film composer, Jess’s workdays are now filled with shopping for luxury goods and cooking in his perfectly designed kitchen. Jess kills at cooking, a talent that only serves her intensifying urge to dig in to Los Angeles’s celebrity buffet.
When her food garners the attention of an actress on the rise, well, she’s all too willing to throw it in with the composer and upgrade again, a decision that will have far-reaching ramifications that could explode all her relationships.
All the while, her mother looms ever closer, forcing Jess to confront the traumatic secrets she’s been running from all her life.
EXCERPT
BUY AT ~
INDIEBOUND
ITUNES
BARNES & NOBLE
AMAZON
AUTHOR LINKS~
WEBSITE
MY TWO CENTS~
I wanted to crawl inside this book. It reminded me of my youth (late 80's, early 90's) for so many reasons and I've never really ever been to California.
Ms. Mahin has a great sense of characterization, dialogue and setting. She's extremely engaging.
This book is brilliant. It's smart and snarky and so well done that you'll both want to finish it all at once and savor it because damn it you'll want more!
Ms. Mahin is on my auto buy list from now on.
SPOILERS BELOW--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I felt that Ms. Mahin dropped the ball on further explaining Jess's teenage pregnancy (unless I missed it, and really all I needed was a sentence or two more).
I was very happy that the relationship with Jess and her mom wasn't wrapped up in a pretty tidy bow because it was realistic that it didn't. I think it would have ruined the book otherwise. Life is ugly and many times family is ugly too.
I wished a bit more for Jess at the end, but that's probably the romantic in me.
BEST FRIENDS' BLOGS~
Ann@Romancing the Readers
Karen~The Many Faces of Romance
UP NEXT~
30Apr15~ Review~ Cursed by Fire by Jacquelyn Frank
7May15~ Let's Hear it for the Mom's
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