You Cannonballers know what you’re talking about! I am the billionth person to read and enjoy Act Like It, but I’m a special snowflake. I don’t like romances. But I liked this one! I really liked it, you guys!
First, a housekeeping note: I checked Lucy Parker’s Twitter feed and see that Act Like It is set to be released as a paperback in July. This is good news for the non-Kindled among us! For the Kindled, this is currently $3.99, and well worth it.
A brief synopsis for the uninitiated: Lainie and Richard are theatre actors in the same production in London’s West End. Lainie is the lesser known, but with a solid and virtuous public image. Richard has greater fame, but his personal antics are tarnishing his reputation, so management dreams up the fake romance between Lainie and Richard. Here’s where I’d typically roll my eyes, and says OF COURSE they really fall in love and OF COURSE Richard isn’t as bad as he seems, but it really wasn’t eyeroll-worthy at all. It was sweet and real and well-paced.
Parker managed to craft two likeable yet real and flawed characters. Lainie and Richard have depth and backstory and their relationship progresses with the nuance of far more expensive and more widely-published titles. I loved both of them. Parker’s writing showed the real affection and growing intimacy between the characters without it ever seeming schmaltzy or convenient. While they discover a lot about themselves as they fall in love, neither seems to greatly diminish themselves or completely break ranks with their established character traits, another thing that usually causes me to detach from romances. My only quibble was that I kept wondering how it had taken Richard this long to put himself out there emotionally.
Thank you all for your thoughtful and intelligent reviews. I’m discovering so many new types of books from all of you, and this one was a gem.
YAY!
Welcome to the club!
A lot of people who say they don’t like romance (or any genre), just haven’t found the right books in the genre yet. I still say that I don’t like sci-fi, even though I love a whole bunch of books that are classified that way. I nonetheless keep trying new suggestions (mostly from rave reviews here) and every so often, I find a book that must undoubtedly be classified as science fiction, that I really really enjoy. Like The Martian by Andy Weir or the Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown. Of course, the really science-heavy or spaceship-related parts of those books were my least favourite parts of the story, but I enjoyed myself immensely while reading them.
If you’re interested in trying more romance, you certainly won’t be lacking for suggestions on this site. I love that this year romance is by far the most read and reviewed genre, that was certainly not the case when I began my first Cannonball (back in the long long ago when we didn’t even have a group blog).
I was so bummed when my book club picked The Boys in the Boat one month. “I HATE SPORTS NONFICTION!” But I loved it. A rave review is a rave review. I will happily look past genre to see what all the buzz is about.