Reviewer: Rowena Fame, Fate, and the First Kiss by Kasie West
Publisher: Harper Collins, Harper Teen
Publication Date: February 5, 2019
Format: eARC
Source: Edelweiss
Point-of-View: First Person
Genres: Young Adult
Pages: 384
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Reading Challenges: Rowena's 2019 GoodReads Challenge
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Lacey Barnes has dreamt of being in a movie for as long as she can remember. However, while her dream did include working alongside the hottest actor in Hollywood, it didn’t involve having to finish up her senior year of high school at the same time she was getting her big break. Although that is nothing compared to Donavan, the straight-laced student her father hires to tutor her, who is a full-on nightmare.
As Lacey struggles to juggle her burgeoning career, some on-set sabotage, and an off-screen romance with the unlikeliest of leading men, she quickly learns that sometimes the best stories happen when you go off script.
If you read Love, Life, and the List, then you’ll remember Lacey because Lacey and Abby were friends. In this book, Kasie West revisits these characters with a story that features Lacey front and center. I was really looking forward to reading this book because I adored Love, Life, and the List and was looking for more of that kind of action and I’m not sure if it was a mood or what but there were quite a few times when I thought this book dragged and in the end, that messed with my enjoyment of the overall story being told.
So Lacey is an actress who is about to get her big break on a zombie movie. She should be over the moon about that but she’s not connecting with her heartthrob co-star and she’s having to finish her senior year with a tutor that her father hired to help her pass her classes. She’d be able to handle all of that if her tutor wasn’t a nightmare named Donovan. She’s dealing with a bunch of stuff and having to juggle it all is low key getting to her.
I did like Lacey’s personality and thought she was super adorable but I didn’t completely connect with her and Donovan, the way that I did with Abby and Cooper. I can’t completely tell you guys why because on the surface, they were fine. Their bickering was cute and seeing them grow together was fine but for some reason, it was really easy for me to put the book down and do something, really anything else.
This was a light, really fluffy read and most of the time, that works for me. I’m all about the light and fluffy. So while I was happy that Lacey gets her guy in the end, the repetitiveness of her days on set, and the obvious on set drama didn’t spark my usual joy for Kasie West books and that surprised me so this one gets a 3 out of 5 stars from me.
Grade: 3 out of 5
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