Wow, this one is really good. For the record, it's another sequel/takes place in the same universe as a few other books--notably Natural Born Charmer and Glitter Baby (which I haven't read). I say it's a sequel because a few characters from those books make some cameo appearances as Georgie's friends, but they're not super crucial to the plot.
Anyway, this book is clearly another version of the Brangelina/Jennifer Aniston drama that we all know well. Our heroine, Georgie York, is America's Sweetheart primarily for a sitcom she was in for 8 years, "Skip and Scooter," in which she played a spunky teen orphan living with a rich family. Everyone loved her Scooter Brown, until the show ended when her costar Bramwell Shepard (playing the sweet preppy Skip Scofield) got caught with a sex tape. In adult life she's made a few shitty romantic comedies she's not proud of, and she's recently divorced from Lance Marks the action star, who very notably threw her over for Jade Gentry, gorgeous sultry humanitarian. The book starts out with the sonogram of their baby being thrown in Georgie's face by paparazzi-- especially painful for Georgie since she wants kids and Lance didn't and he's been lying that they broke up over her not wanting any. Her old costar Bram sees this and is all, "Fuck it, I'm not coming to her rescue," which Georgie notes. However, after Georgie runs for it and heads to their former costar/mutual friend Trevor's house, Bram follows along and overhears Georgie proposing marriage to Trevor (who's of course gay) so as to get the paparazzi of her back. To which he is pretty much all LOL in her face about...but then he starts following Georgie around to various places and forcing her to interact with him in public.
Let me tell you about Bram: he was pretty much an asshole for the entire run of the show. He came from a bad family/neighborhood and spent eight years of the show partying it up with his asshole friends and doing every substance he could get a hold of. Georgie had a crush on him for his good looks (and I think the personality of Skip that he showed on camera), which he deliberately decided to ruin by taking her virginity without so much as a thank you ma'am after the wham and bam. Pretty much everyone (except Trevor, for some reason) that knew him hates him, and for excellent reasons, and his career has boiled down to playing some skeezy dude once in awhile. However, Bram's been secretly rehabilitating himself--quitting the jerky friends and the substance abuse, not being as broke as you'd think, and he's secretly working on a movie deal he really cares about. On the other hand, he's still quite the public asshole and enjoys that. But overall, he needs to rehab his business image in Hollywood and hanging around with Georgie and fueling "Skip and Scooter" reunion movie rumors could help. So he follows her on a trip to Vegas, and they get wasted to the point where they admit they don't hate each other any more, and then Bram realizes something--
Next thing they remember, they wake up naked in bed together with a marriage certificate on the floor. What the fuck. They don't remember if they had sex or not, much less the wedding, but Bram does remember his last thought being that their drinks were roofied. At first they're ready to call lawyers, but Georgie quickly talks Bram into having a sham marriage for at least a few months for the aforementioned publicity reasons (plus bribery), and they quickly have her move into his nicer-than-expected place and go all over town to get their photos taken. And married life is weird and rocky even beyond pretending to suddenly love a guy that you think is a jerk. Bram loves to say jerky things to Georgie that aren't true ("you're going to have to tell my girlfriend I'm married," "I got your ring on eBay," etc.) and it takes her awhile to figure out what's true and what's not with him. And then there's his housekeeper Chaz, a punk 20-year-old who Georgie likens to Mrs. Danvers in personality. However, Chaz turns out to be like Bram--both of them come from bad backgrounds, both of them like to be assholes in public, but privately have their own fierce loyalties that they show in abrasive ways. This is especially evident when Chaz has to associate with Aaron, Georgie's sweet and nerdy PA, and starts naggingly rehabbing his look and diet.
This is probably one of the best "rehabbing a bad boy" books I've ever read. It points out that yes, the guy has to decide on his own to clean up his act--which indeed, Bram is doing all on his own, thankyouverymuch. But associating with Georgie--a goodhearted lass and team player-- starts to mess with Bram's perception of himself as a sly lone wolf who's not interested in anyone but himself. He's quite protective of her around Lance, or her pushy stage dad Paul, neither of whom he approves of very much. He totally supports Georgie in dealing with people, especially when Lance and Jade show up at their dinner party unexpectedly and bring their recent possible exposure of SARS along with them, forcing the entire party into a bottle episode house arrest. Likewise, she supports him as he's trying to convince their neighbor/former PA turned studio bigwig Rory into getting involved in the movie he wants to make. While the movie plotline doesn't quite end like I thought it was leading up to, it overall seemed to work for the people involved in the way that they wanted it to, I suppose.
"The sex part of this phony marriage had turned out to be a lot more fun than he could have imagined. So much fun that he'd started to feel a little uneasy. He only had room for one person in his life, and that was himself. Chaz had been an accident."
I have to admit that the two of them taking pot shots at each other is fun, even in the phase where they hate each other. The evolution is well done, and I agreed with a line in this review about how the context of their dialogue changes. And when they finally get around to having sex, the scenes are really fun (particularly one where they're in a sex toy shop).
The other potential romances in this are also very sweet--the slow burning interest between Chaz and Aaron and the surprise interest between Georgie's dad and her agent. The agent story is particularly interesting because Paul picked Laura out as someone he could easily control--and so far she's been that and is kind of ashamed of that--but during their house arrest she stands up to him and comments that he needs to be more of a dad and less of a dictator, which he slowly realizes and starts doing, and starts getting his own life as well. As for Georgie getting her own life, she takes up recording people around the house when she realizes that some of them (which is to say, Chaz) open up more when they're being filmed, and this leads her into a new direction careerwise and otherwise standing up for herself in a reasonable manner.
Anyway, I'm giving this four and a half stars because it was near epic. I suspect I'll reread this one as often as I do Natural Born Charmer.
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