This was a lovely, comfy read after a weekend of intense emotions and anxiety attacks. Making Up is the third in Lucy Parker’s London Celebrities series. You don’t have to read Act Like It, but you should read Pretty Face first. You should read them both because they are delightful, but Pretty Face provides a lot of context.
Lucy Parker has become an author I will definitely buy. She creates great characters and some very steamy romance. She has a way with turning phrases that are funny and illuminating.
Anyone with an IQ higher than point-five would see the warning lights flashing around them right now. Even Scott and Ryan, who Mother Nature had probably made so handsome because it was the only way they would survive natural selection, pulled identical “yikes” faces.
Making Up is sort of a second chance/definitely enemies to lovers story. Trix and Leo were developing a romance as teens, but at 16 Leo was a prat and neither handled things well. They overcome the misunderstanding between them fairly early, leading to lots of them not keeping their hands off each other. Trix is still dealing with the emotional fallout from her emotionally abusive ex, and anxious about everything, but especially a new, intense relationship.
Complicating matters, Leo’s sister is back from a fashion design program in New York City and acting like she hates everyone and everything. Cat is an irritant in the book and a stressor on Trix and Leo’s unsteady relationship. It would be easy to say the book would be better without her, because the drama she brings isn’t necessary. But Cat is another facet of Parker’s theme, that people can fuck up, be damaged, never completely heal and still be worthy of love and happiness.
Thanks to the glory of the Internet, I had a little conversation with Lucy Parker about Making Up. I thanked her for putting these words in Leo’s mouth:
Yeah, well, it’s not a film. Bad experiences don’t just disappear because of a grand gesture.
Direct convo with the author? That is SO exciting.
I liked Making Up a lot but not as Pretty Face or Act Like It. Still rereadable.
Unless Parker bowens, she will be on my autobuy list for the foreseeable future.
After two excellent and one very solidly enjoyable book, Lucy Parker is absolutely an auto-buy author for me now. I was very happy to receive an ARC of this, but had already pre-ordered the book.
Yes to all of this.
She’s autobuy for me, and this book confirms it. It isn’t as spectacularly excellent as its predecessors, but it is quietly very, very good.