2.5 stars. I like Bea Page – Academy of Stardom is one of the RH series that’s on my re-read rotation – but this series from her has been Not It. I think it’s official: she’s a rare author who is better at writing RH than MF. Usually it’s the other way around.
Like the other books in this series, this story is set in the fictional town of Princetown, England. This is a stepbrother / stepsister story between 2 adults who had a 1 night stand a while ago. (She's 28, he might be early 30s). Their night together rocked both of their worlds, and now they’re meeting again on their parents wedding day. Neither one of them was aware that they were about to become stepsiblings, so it's a sudden shock.
That could be a solid angsty premise, but their parents both suck. So, the forbidden stepsibling "we can't be together" angst is completely unwarranted. They're both adults, they can do what they want, and who cares what their verbally abusive parents think? Just be together! All of the obstacles to their relationship were flimsy. So, they both seemed weak to treat these non-events as real obstacles.
The hero has synesthesia, which is interesting and cool, and he channels that into painting. But he was very “poor me” about it. He was kind of a sad sack vibe. The heroine is 28 and works as a personal assistant to her narcissistic famous actress mom. She even says that she knows her mom doesn’t treat her well, and she should quit. Well then, why doesn’t she? I can’t stand heroines who are “poor me” about their lives, but then don’t lift a single finger to try to change their bad situation. If a heroine has a terrible life and she's trapped for reasons beyond her control, then it's easy to like and root for her. But if she has some control over making it better and just....doesn't do it, why should I like her?
This heroine had TWO situations like that. She hated working for her mom, but did it anyway and wasn’t making any moves to get out. AND, she has a stalker that she's freaked out about, and doesn’t tell anyone about it. Like…….why would you keep that to yourself?? That’s insane! I didn’t feel bad for her when she was stressing out about either her mom or the stalker, because I was like, “you can make some moves to try to get yourself out of these bad situations, and you’re not doing it!” And sure, it's possible for someone to have a psychological block that prevents them from being proactive about their life. But this story didn't have enough emotional depth to pull off that reason for the heroine's lack of action. I think it was trying to make that her reason, but it didn't work.
It felt like I was supposed to like her just because she’s the heroine, not because this story bothered giving her a personality that's worth rooting for. Bea Paige is capable of writing much better heroines, in all of her RH series. So, something about writing MF seems to make her forget how to write decent main characters.
Also, this heroine’s bad situation with her mom seemed like it must be leading somewhere – like, the heroine would finally stand up for herself and tell her mom to shove it. Nope! It never went anywhere! Her mom just vanished from the story.
Unfortunately I’ll keep reading these books, because Bea Paige is good at writing interesting worlds with side characters that you want to explore. I’m mildly curious about the last book, even though that will probably be a letdown too. And, this book introduced a guy in a band that I hope is the set-up for an RH story in this world. I'm glad there's only 1 book left in this MF series, and hopefully she'll then return to the stuff she's good at writing.