[Review] Limelight Kisses - Michelle Segal

Summary: A heartwarming and sexy Hollywood romance: Katherine Walker, currently the brightest star in the Hollywood sky, hates director Ryan Lancaster. With a passion! And everyone in the movie business knows it. She'll go to any extreme to avoid working with him, but unfortunately that's exactly what she has to do! Ryan has been hired to direct a film at short notice, and Katherine already signed a binding contract to act in it long before. Of course sparks fly immediately on the set, because they've already known each other for a long time… much more intimately than the public was previously aware of! (Pub Date: May 31, 2016)


Review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. I want to also thank the publisher for giving me this opportunity.

This is a nice idea with very nice characters.

Katherine has history with whom turns out to be the substitute director a movie she can't escape. He has left her all of a sudden once and she never recovered, how could she deal with all that now?

As I said, I liked—no, loved the characters. Katherine is very relatable even if she is a some super judge daughter, the poor rich girl type, she is very serious about things and knows she has a duty toward her grieving family, due to which her being an actress can't last. Ryan has a big dream and very little to built toward it when he meets Katie and falls in love. He too is bound by reality, though, he realizes too soon they can't make it together and decides to let go.

You know, all that drama felt real, even if you could say it's just too much drama. And Ryan is so cute! How he always has Katie's best interest in mind, even while not making the wisest decisions...

I also like the cliche of love behind the scenes, and Ryan helping Katie's anxiety with her debut.

The problem was development.

First, that summary tells you of a conflict the reader only really reads about many, many chapters later. This story has two parts, the then and the now, and the summary makes you think the now would be that important, while I feel them getting together was much more the focus.

More than that, it was rushed. The characters spent too much time having internal drama fest, while the actual interactions were just predictable. And then, the plot just flew by. We even have a fake fiance device that I never really saw the use for—even if I was excited to see this, it was mere repetition of past events with new names. Them having problems working together? Barely, unless you count the narration telling us they did. We are thrown directly into sexual tension, instead of actual tension to build up into sexual.

I feel this story needs rewriting. I did love the past scenes and that could even make a great standalone but imagining the second half was the author's real intention, she'd best cut on the first half into 10% of the book, make room for the main plot.

I always feel sorry when I need to criticize this much a romance—they are already the underdogs of critics. And this one specially, since it is rare for me to like the characters this much. This has much room for improvement, too. It's just that, as it is, I couldn't imagine what the story could be and give it a presumed rating.

Rating: 2 out of 5.