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Blind Item #2
Guilty Pleasure
"Summer’s hottest new beach read, a juicy tome inspired by real-life Hollywood stories and scandals.” ―E! Online on Blind Item
In this jaw-dropping sequel to Blind Item, three young Hollywood professionals strive to keep the industry’s most salacious scandals under wraps during awards season.
Nicola faces her biggest challenge as a publicist when she is forced to represent her superstar ex-boyfriend, Seamus, when he returns from rehab. Her boss Gaynor is struggling to keep the PR agency afloat, and Seamus is one client who definitely won’t leave as long as Nicola is around. He’s willing to do anything to win her back―even start a fake relationship for some badly needed good publicity.
Meanwhile, tabloid journalist Billy’s integrity is tested when he’s asked to print the inside scoop on a troubled star. And as for their bestie Kara? Miss Reality Show may have a sex tape on the market.
With everyone's career and relationships in jeopardy, the three friends must trust each other again―before all their dirty secrets spill.
In this jaw-dropping sequel to Blind Item, three young Hollywood professionals strive to keep the industry’s most salacious scandals under wraps during awards season.
Nicola faces her biggest challenge as a publicist when she is forced to represent her superstar ex-boyfriend, Seamus, when he returns from rehab. Her boss Gaynor is struggling to keep the PR agency afloat, and Seamus is one client who definitely won’t leave as long as Nicola is around. He’s willing to do anything to win her back―even start a fake relationship for some badly needed good publicity.
Meanwhile, tabloid journalist Billy’s integrity is tested when he’s asked to print the inside scoop on a troubled star. And as for their bestie Kara? Miss Reality Show may have a sex tape on the market.
With everyone's career and relationships in jeopardy, the three friends must trust each other again―before all their dirty secrets spill.
425 pages, Hardcover
First published June 5, 2018
80 people are currently reading
1063 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Dickson
9 books51 followersAustralian-American Kevin Dickson lives on the outskirts of Los Angeles with his husband, three dogs and an incredibly annoying parrot.
He is the author of the Vampire State book series - From Him To Eternity (book 1) and Seasons Of Blood (Book 2) - as well as the Los Angeles Times bestseller Blind Item and its sequel, Guilty Pleasure.
He is also the former guitarist/vocalist of punk band The Chew Toys, and you can pick up their one album real cheap on Bandcamp.
He's also a veteran entertainment journalist who somehow managed to survive fifteen years in the tabloids with a few shreds of integrity intact - even after appearing as a guest judge on Paris Hilton Is My New BFF.
Kevin is a music obsessive. He's friendly and chatty, and can often be found at the LA Zoo, hiking the San Gabriels or nursing a Labios Rojos at La Justina in Tijuana.
He is currently hard at work on the next Vampire State installment, as well as an LGBTQIA+ romance set in the sordid world of Hollywood.
He is the author of the Vampire State book series - From Him To Eternity (book 1) and Seasons Of Blood (Book 2) - as well as the Los Angeles Times bestseller Blind Item and its sequel, Guilty Pleasure.
He is also the former guitarist/vocalist of punk band The Chew Toys, and you can pick up their one album real cheap on Bandcamp.
He's also a veteran entertainment journalist who somehow managed to survive fifteen years in the tabloids with a few shreds of integrity intact - even after appearing as a guest judge on Paris Hilton Is My New BFF.
Kevin is a music obsessive. He's friendly and chatty, and can often be found at the LA Zoo, hiking the San Gabriels or nursing a Labios Rojos at La Justina in Tijuana.
He is currently hard at work on the next Vampire State installment, as well as an LGBTQIA+ romance set in the sordid world of Hollywood.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 23, 2024
When Jack and I started to work on Guilty Pleasure, we talked to a lot of people who'd read and enjoyed Blind Item. We wanted the sequel to take advantage of people's affection for the characters in Blind Item, and really expand on that affection by plunging Nicola's entire world into a darker, more manipulative and unstable place, but still emphasizing love, friendship and integrity as the most important assets in that world.
We felt that we needed to try to capture the state of entertainment right now, with the death of the celebrity myth, and fame becoming something that's manufactured and consumed, with little regard to the people who are destroyed along the way. That all sounds pretty heavy, and at its core, Guilty Pleasure is a fantasy response to that world. We have all the crazy undercurrents of fame - the advisers, the liars and the fake relationships - plus we still have our three main characters searching for what they really want out of Hollywood.
I wanted to make this book more romantic, in a realistic way, than Blind Item. That book had the heady rush of a new relationship. This time around, all three of our leads, Kara, Nicola and Billy, are in various stages of new relationships, and that was fun. Nic is stuck with the fallout from her time with Seamus, and Seamus is still stuck on her. Billy has gone straight to sweatpants on the sofa in his first adult relationship, and Kara finds herself falling for one of the biggest stars on earth (he also happens to be one of the kinkiest).
For Guilty Pleasure, we set out to bury our real-life scandals a little deeper. We've had really fun feedback from people who've read advance copies. The guessing game is still a ton of fun in this book, but only someone with encyclopedic knowledge of celebrity gossip over the last twenty years will have much luck with getting it right.
Anyway, it feels weird to review a book that I wrote, but I wanted to reach out to people who are thinking of checking out Guilty Pleasure, and let them know that Jack and I worked really hard to come up with a book that honored our fictional, crazy characters from Blind Item, and also gave our readers something fresh, exciting and unpredictable. My favorite memory of working on this book is that when I reached the end of every draft (and there were about eleven drafts), I cried. Each time.
I'm not going to say whether they were happy or sad tears. I just took it as a good sign that it got me every time. I hope it gets you too.
We felt that we needed to try to capture the state of entertainment right now, with the death of the celebrity myth, and fame becoming something that's manufactured and consumed, with little regard to the people who are destroyed along the way. That all sounds pretty heavy, and at its core, Guilty Pleasure is a fantasy response to that world. We have all the crazy undercurrents of fame - the advisers, the liars and the fake relationships - plus we still have our three main characters searching for what they really want out of Hollywood.
I wanted to make this book more romantic, in a realistic way, than Blind Item. That book had the heady rush of a new relationship. This time around, all three of our leads, Kara, Nicola and Billy, are in various stages of new relationships, and that was fun. Nic is stuck with the fallout from her time with Seamus, and Seamus is still stuck on her. Billy has gone straight to sweatpants on the sofa in his first adult relationship, and Kara finds herself falling for one of the biggest stars on earth (he also happens to be one of the kinkiest).
For Guilty Pleasure, we set out to bury our real-life scandals a little deeper. We've had really fun feedback from people who've read advance copies. The guessing game is still a ton of fun in this book, but only someone with encyclopedic knowledge of celebrity gossip over the last twenty years will have much luck with getting it right.
Anyway, it feels weird to review a book that I wrote, but I wanted to reach out to people who are thinking of checking out Guilty Pleasure, and let them know that Jack and I worked really hard to come up with a book that honored our fictional, crazy characters from Blind Item, and also gave our readers something fresh, exciting and unpredictable. My favorite memory of working on this book is that when I reached the end of every draft (and there were about eleven drafts), I cried. Each time.
I'm not going to say whether they were happy or sad tears. I just took it as a good sign that it got me every time. I hope it gets you too.
July 5, 2018
First and foremost, this book is a sequel (which is something that I did not realize until after I requested the book and it came in the mail). The first book in the series is Blind Item and I sadly did not have the time to get a copy and read it before it was time to read Guilty Pleasure. (I found that I still understood what was happening in Guilty Pleasure, though, without having read the previous book.) Secondly, Guilty Pleasure is an adult book containing adult subject matter (such as explicit sexual content). And now that all of that is out of the way, I will move on to my review! As some of you may have seen, I listed Guilty Pleasure under the prompt “biggest (positive) surprise for the first half of 2018” in my Mid-Year Freak Out Book Tag post, and let me tell you why! When requesting this title, I figured that I would definitely be entertained by it, and I was also curious because I had never read a book like this before. Guilty Pleasure, however, surpassed my expectations and I quickly became quite addicted to it!
I really liked the tone of the writing, and just the style in which the story was told. It also appears that I needed a small break from YA because I was really happy to read about adult characters, working their adult jobs, and dealing with adult things. It was really refreshing in that sense, and also because it was all about what happens behind the scenes in Hollywood. I became very attached to the characters that I loved, and wished the best for them, while quietly muttering curses at the ones that I disliked. I liked Guilty Pleasure so much, in fact, that I plan on reading Blind Item sometime this summer as well (which never happens for me with books that have been spoiled in any way). I feel like so much must have happened in book one, that book two couldn’t have possibly mentioned of all of it, so there would still be a lot of fresh material for me there! I also miss the characters quite a bit, and want to read about how all of their stories began. I really enjoyed Guilty Pleasure and I truly hope that Dickson and Ketsoyan write more books for this series, and that they also continue creating stories together in general!
I really liked the tone of the writing, and just the style in which the story was told. It also appears that I needed a small break from YA because I was really happy to read about adult characters, working their adult jobs, and dealing with adult things. It was really refreshing in that sense, and also because it was all about what happens behind the scenes in Hollywood. I became very attached to the characters that I loved, and wished the best for them, while quietly muttering curses at the ones that I disliked. I liked Guilty Pleasure so much, in fact, that I plan on reading Blind Item sometime this summer as well (which never happens for me with books that have been spoiled in any way). I feel like so much must have happened in book one, that book two couldn’t have possibly mentioned of all of it, so there would still be a lot of fresh material for me there! I also miss the characters quite a bit, and want to read about how all of their stories began. I really enjoyed Guilty Pleasure and I truly hope that Dickson and Ketsoyan write more books for this series, and that they also continue creating stories together in general!
June 21, 2018
I’m going to admit I didn’t read this. I ordered it by mistake on Amazon, and when I realized that I’d read and hated the first book in the series, I sent it back immediately.
July 8, 2018
Review HERE on July 9th (link will update when review is live)
This series can basically be described as the Dummies Guide to Hollywood or How to be Miserable in Hollywood or How to Become a Disney Star & End Up a Drug Addict. You get the idea, it's like the extended release or book version of Perez, E! or Radar online. Seriously, get the popcorn out because you can't make this stuff up!
Blind Item & Guilty Pleasure center on a fictional relationship of a big Hollywood Star and a Publicist but based on real Hollywood gossip that the authors have either witnessed or reported on. And oh my gosh! Some of these situations are just gross, unbelievable and kind of made me lose a little hope in humanity. LAX is weird y'all!!!!!
Hollywood Glamour is just a cesspool of desire, deceit and a whole lot of scheming. I walked away with the fear that one of my children might either want to be a movie star or some type of "famous" and it literally made me want to raise them without TV, in a cave in Montana... Almost. #GodBlessTexas
This is seriously a train wreck you can't walk away from! I'll admit that I sat and wondered who some of these people were based on because sometimes I wanted to boycott them in all aspects of life. Other times I wanted to invited characters over for dinner, tell them people suck and find out who I needed to beat up. You know, go all mommy cray-cray and light all the mean peoples cars on fire. 💆🏼 #sorrynotsorry
If you like Hollywood gossip or need one wild ride, then read this series!
*This series is New Adult and has explicit scenes & situations that are not appropriate for young audiences.
This series can basically be described as the Dummies Guide to Hollywood or How to be Miserable in Hollywood or How to Become a Disney Star & End Up a Drug Addict. You get the idea, it's like the extended release or book version of Perez, E! or Radar online. Seriously, get the popcorn out because you can't make this stuff up!
Blind Item & Guilty Pleasure center on a fictional relationship of a big Hollywood Star and a Publicist but based on real Hollywood gossip that the authors have either witnessed or reported on. And oh my gosh! Some of these situations are just gross, unbelievable and kind of made me lose a little hope in humanity. LAX is weird y'all!!!!!
Hollywood Glamour is just a cesspool of desire, deceit and a whole lot of scheming. I walked away with the fear that one of my children might either want to be a movie star or some type of "famous" and it literally made me want to raise them without TV, in a cave in Montana... Almost. #GodBlessTexas
This is seriously a train wreck you can't walk away from! I'll admit that I sat and wondered who some of these people were based on because sometimes I wanted to boycott them in all aspects of life. Other times I wanted to invited characters over for dinner, tell them people suck and find out who I needed to beat up. You know, go all mommy cray-cray and light all the mean peoples cars on fire. 💆🏼 #sorrynotsorry
If you like Hollywood gossip or need one wild ride, then read this series!
*This series is New Adult and has explicit scenes & situations that are not appropriate for young audiences.
March 13, 2019
In this jaw-dropping sequel to Blind Item, three young Hollywood professionals strive to keep the industry’s most salacious scandals under wraps during awards season.
Nicola faces her biggest challenge as a publicist when she is forced to represent her superstar ex-boyfriend, Seamus, when he returns from rehab. Her boss Gaynor is struggling to keep the PR agency afloat, and Seamus is one client who definitely won’t leave as long as Nicola is around. He’s willing to do anything to win her back―even start a fake relationship for some badly needed good publicity.
Meanwhile, tabloid journalist Billy’s integrity is tested when he’s asked to print the inside scoop on a troubled star. And as for their bestie Kara? Miss Reality Show may have a sex tape on the market.
With everyone's career and relationships in jeopardy, the three friends must trust each other again―before all their dirty secrets spill.
----------
This is the second book (Blind Item) by these authors. They say the stories are real but the names are fake. This reads like the inside scoop of a gossip magazine. The book is long, especially for what it is. It's interesting enough but nothing I'd race to read.
Nicola faces her biggest challenge as a publicist when she is forced to represent her superstar ex-boyfriend, Seamus, when he returns from rehab. Her boss Gaynor is struggling to keep the PR agency afloat, and Seamus is one client who definitely won’t leave as long as Nicola is around. He’s willing to do anything to win her back―even start a fake relationship for some badly needed good publicity.
Meanwhile, tabloid journalist Billy’s integrity is tested when he’s asked to print the inside scoop on a troubled star. And as for their bestie Kara? Miss Reality Show may have a sex tape on the market.
With everyone's career and relationships in jeopardy, the three friends must trust each other again―before all their dirty secrets spill.
----------
This is the second book (Blind Item) by these authors. They say the stories are real but the names are fake. This reads like the inside scoop of a gossip magazine. The book is long, especially for what it is. It's interesting enough but nothing I'd race to read.
December 9, 2023
This book was better than the first in the series in generally being interesting and sucking me into the story. It also gave a lot more detail on the dark side of pr management. I’d say it is a must read for anyone interested in celebrities, Hollywood, etc. - Particularly if you’re consuming online or other media about them. It includes things like PR relationships, the hiding of scandals and how far pr managers will go to protect and control the reputations of their clients- up to and including mafia type shenanigans. And it’s all just a part of an interesting story covering characters like the biggest male movie star in Hollywood, tabloid journalists, Disney stars, reality tv personalities, and the normal people just trying to live life in the midst of the wildness of it all.
October 24, 2018
This is the second installment of the book, Blind Item. Of course the sequel didn’t disappoint. It was Delicious, juicy, and i couldn’t put it down. Now boys, let’s get to book 3. Y’all can’t stop at 2!
May 7, 2018
So much fun! Sequel to last year's delicious Blind Item. Irresistible gossip, movie stars, and Hollywood shenanigans!
June 12, 2018
Trashy and I mean it as a high compliment.
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June 23, 2018Ack. I’ve got to check my own past reviews. I tried to read this because I paid for it but....it’s all chatter one dimensional dialogue and no depth.
July 2, 2018
This book was a Best of the Best for July 2018 selection by Stevo's Book Reviews on the Internet: http://forums.delphiforums.com/stevo1...
October 22, 2018
Jackie Collins fans will enjoy this book. Very similar writing. Make sure that you read the first book in the series (Blind Item) before reading this book.
September 30, 2018
Couldn't put it down! I hope there is more to come!
October 1, 2018
LOVED this book---I enjoyed being able to follow up with the characters from Blind Item--highly recommend reading that one first!
November 12, 2018
Not even close to the first book. Felt too whiny and basically annoying..what upsets me is the first book in this series had a lot of heart even if it could make you blush
January 8, 2019
I liked the characters a lot more in this sequel to “Blind Item.” Everyone’s personality was a little more flushed out and it was very satisfying.
August 23, 2019
Audiobook. Can’t get enough! Hoping for another book in this series but if it ends here, I am happy with the ending.
October 5, 2019
Too much fun.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews