Reviewer: Tracy Lip Action by Virna DePaul
Series: Kiss Talent Agency #1
Publication Date: April 23rd, 2017
Pages: 195
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
Series Rating:
Marissa
Appearance is everything to my upper-crust mother, but when she insists I take back my pedigreed-but-cheating ex? I’d rather stab myself with a salad fork. So I blurt out I’m dating someone new. Someone like…that smoking-hot, vaguely familiar guy across the restaurant, who could be the next James Bond.
Turns out he’s the star of my favorite, cheesy, sci-fi soap opera. (Don’t judge me.) One minute I’m fantasizing about Borg and his green-hued abs. The next, Simon Dale is making me an offer my sex-starved body can’t refuse.
Simon
I’m up for a breakout movie role that’ll launch me off the B-list, but I don’t need a script to read the scene between Marissa and her mum. Even though I’m a London gutter rat who never rubbed elbows with a Royal, I easily slip into the role of Marissa’s doting boyfriend. Why? I need a favor in return— a steady girlfriend, just long enough to convince the producers I’ve changed my wild ways.
Trouble is, I’m going all Method on this relationship—and close to losing the one thing that could break me. My heart.
Marissa is kind of Hollywood royalty because of her family’s money. She doesn’t feel that way and just wants to live her life as a normal person. Her mother, however, has very different ideas. When Marissa tells her mother that she broke up with her long-time boyfriend because she found out he’d been cheating on her for 6 months her mother freaks out like it’s the end of the world. Not that he’d been cheating on Marissa but that she broke it off. Nice mom. Not. Marissa’s mom is insisting that she get back together with her boyfriend but Marissa refuses. She sees a guy in the country club they’re at and makes up a story saying that she’s already seeing someone new. Due to a set of circumstances she actually meets the guy and it turns out that he needs a fake girlfriend as well.
Simon is an actor on a TV show where he’s an alien. He really needs a big break doing some serious film work but no one believes he can do it. He’s got a playboy reputation and the producers of the one big film he’s being considered for think his reputation will be bad for publicity. Simon’s not the person they think he is. He grew up in the streets of London but he got him and his sister out. He lives simply and saves his money as he doesn’t feel he deserves better. When he meets Marissa he tells her that it’s all fake but the more time he spends with her the more he can’t get her out of his head. Unfortunately they’re ruse depends on the producers believing them as well as Marissa’s parents never finding out who he really is.
This was a cute story. It was a pretty simple fake relationship story but I like the way the author threw some curve balls in there for us. Having Simon grow up as a London gutter rat was an interesting aspect of the story and of course that effected almost all of his decisions. He was a good guy and not an actor that made some money and then lived lavishly. He lived above a bar and saved his money.
Marissa was a woman who had lived under her mother’s thumb for so long she truly didn’t know how to get out from under it. Being with Simon made her look at her life differently and want to stand up to her mother and do what she wanted with her life. She grew a lot during the course of the book and I liked who she was at the end.
The relationship with Marissa and Simon started out as just playing a part, then just sex and then more. Of course neither admitted it which is always frustrating when that happens with characters but I liked that they worked it all out in the end. Overall it was a fun book and I definitely enjoyed reading it.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5