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Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Theme: Secret Baby/Surprise Pregnancy, Workplace
Archetype: Actor/Actress/Celebrity
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Celia. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.
The summary:
And the award goes to…
Not Nina Alexander that’s for sure. With her best gracious loser face firmly in place, Hollywood’s hottest starlet is hoping to end her evening of disappointment with a graceful exit stage left. Only an unexpected proposal and an awkward wardrobe malfunction mean that this is certainly going to be a night to remember… for all the wrong reasons! So what girl would resist the gorgeous Dominic Kelly coming to her rescue?! Especially when he’s whisking her out of the paparazzi’s prying eyes on the back of his motorbike – and wearing a tux to rival James Bond!
Nina soon realises that the only way to recover from such a scandal is to toughen up and snag the role of the decade in the year’s hottest YA screen adaptation. Who better to train her than her very own professional stuntman? Getting up close and personal with Dom will take Nina well out of her comfort zone – both professionally and in her closely scrutinized private life. But this A-list couple know only too well that’s it not all happy ever afters in Hollywood…
Here is Celia's review:
When I signed up to read Not a Fairy Tale, I was really excited about it. Celebrity scandal, “awkward wardrobe malfunction,” hot stunt man? Sounds great to me. But no. I hate to say this about any book, but it was completely unmemorable. I found myself skimming more than reading and I had a hard time convincing myself to come back to the book each day.
It’s even harder to write a review about an unmemorable book. If I hated it, I could rant. If I loved it, I could gush. I did have my hopes up going in, as I mentioned. The first scene was great. The unexpected proposal, the spectacular wardrobe malfunction. But then it was over without the life changing fallout I was expecting there to be.
I didn’t particularly like Nina. She felt very cliche to me – the former fat girl who reinvents herself to be popular and famous. Actually her backstory was good but it was revealed so late in the story that my opinions were already formed about her and it didn’t endear her to me. Dom had much more potential but he spent all of his time being angsty about secrets he couldn’t tell Nina. I would have loved to see more interactions with Dom and his sisters or him and his group of friends, instead of just him and Nina in their bubble of untold secrets. Actually ,there were a lot of interesting periphery characters introduced but instead of being used to their full potential, they just dropped out of the story.
Overall I was just not feeling this book. The characters felt staid and cliche and their chemistry only lasted through the first sex scene.
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The book doesn’t sound that great, but I’m desperately interested in the “tux to rival James Bond!” in the blurb.
Is it magic? Is it AI? Does it go on clandestine missions on its own or does MI-6 have to slip it into the drycleaning of foreign targets? Can it go undercover as a pair of jeans for casual Fridays? Does it have a license to kill? And if so, how? Boa-constricting? Using the tie (that’s not really a Double Windsor)? I’d totally read that book.
@MsCellany – omg for the good of us all, please write that. It could be a series “the Brotherhood of the Traveling Tuxedos.” Book 1: “Dressing down” – fresh from the hands of Milanese master tailor M, on his first undercover mission, a young tux braves the murky underworld of “sport casual” to catch a ring of Chinese knockoffs. But when he meets a pair of skinny jeans with studs in all the right places all he can think about is tangling zippers with her. Used to being a magical talisman for a sisterhood of girls, Jean has secrets of her own. She’s sworn never to get involved with some snooty suit. But Tux makes her feel like nothing else in the closet. Can their love survive Tux’s lies about his true nature, the gulf between leisure and formal wear, and a villainous factory owner’s fearsome plans to kidnap and clone them all?
@Rebecca @MsCellany please, I want this. So so much.
Cella, so sorry your book was a disappointment, but bwahahahahahaha! At least your review led us to a good laugh.
Jackie Chan did a movie with a “magical” tux – The Tuxedo.
Cassie, I was about to say that. 🙂 IMO even given that they are almost entirely devoid of romance, Jackie Chan movies are great.