Member Reviews
This was a good read. Great plot, great characters, well written.
Moira is Colt's manager and after failing rehab she hauls him to her cousins very isolated farm to sober up. He's a train wreck. Haven runs the farm and takes care of her mentally unstable mother.
She's got a brother who is no where around. She runs the farm (huge acreage) and expects Colt to help too. Guests, which he really isn't and he's sleeping in the bunkhouse with an outdoor shower, something this spoiled pampered Hollywood bad boy isn't accustomed to. Haven is pretty closed off.
Moira keeps tabs on both of them and Colt soon finds himself enjoying the farm and Haven.
He decides to give Haven a birthday present for her 18th birthday, with Moira's help he pays down some of the outstanding heavy duty bills she owes. She's both angry and grateful. Colt is still a spoiled boy and there are times when I wanted to knock him in the head. He's 22. Their ages surprised me a little but didn't effect the story. Colt steps in the manure more than once and does a great job at it.
When her brother who is a total jack hat returns home, drinking and running his mouth things really spiral out of control, just when their relationship seems to have reached a safe place for both of them
Never get comfy in this one, things come crashing down around Haven and with Colt gone she makes a beeline back to help her. Colt follows although he's been warned off. He feels like he needs to be there for her.
This was a soft peddle romance with very light sex only a couple of non dramatic scenes so I would deem this book safe. It's a good story and an easy afternoon read. I would have liked a little more spark between them, but consistent with their characters I get why they were soft peddled.
*arc from NetGalley and Publisher for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
The Actor is a sweet romance, a little saccharine for my tastes, but enjoyable nonetheless. It's not escpecially unique, not especially special, but it is cute, innoffensive and a pleasant bit of escapism. Other reviewers have expressed surprise at how young the characters are, and I have to agree with them on that - I can see why it was written that way, but I'm not sure it worked in all ways. All in all, a nice enough holiday read for when you don't want to have to think or feel too much.
The Actor, Savannah Addison
Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews
Genre: Romance, New Adult
Usually I read review novels more or less in the order I get them, but this one had one of my hooks, actors/Hollywood so it got an early read....sadly though it was an OK read, it wasn't one of the best for me.
I know this is a NA read, but didn't realise they key characters would be Quite that Young! I found given the ages of Colton and Haven (22 and 17) it was hard for me to believe in them. I just couldn't see a 17 yr old running a farm worth millions of dollars alone. There's mention of contractors in for the harvest but the rest, the chickens, horses and cattle, she does alone. Nope, animals need a lot of care and the amount they must have to make up this value would need a dedicated team of workers.
Then there's Colton, failed at rehab, multiple times, yet doesn't get any health issues giving up? Would you really throw someone like that to your young cousin who's already got far more to cope with that she needs?
Later we get all the issues with the farm, her mother and brother and like the problems I have believing in Colton and Haven and what they can/can't do these problems also lacked credibility. Things just don't happen like that in the real world.
I think this is Savanaah's debut novel, and its clear she's got a way with words, can create fictional settings well, but for me it needs a bit more fine tuning, a little closer look at what can really happen as opposed to what she wants to happen to move the story along.
The story is potentially good, the psynopsis certainly drew me in, the writing is good but the plots just lacked badly, very badly in the believability factor for me.
That meant I found it really hard to get behind the issues thrown up, to see the characters as real, to sympathise when things went wrong.
There's the stuff I've covered, but also things like legalities of what happens between her mother and brother, what could happen to the far, etc. I feel the practicalities and legalities don't work for someone like me who needs them to feel genuine, to give a story I feel is real. I know its fiction but its not fantasy.....
Having given us a day to day start of the book the last few pages covered a time span and events that last months. That kind of glossed over me as unreal and felt a bit jarring, as though the author wanted to wrap the story up quickly, without going into too much detail.
I did like the start and there were some snappy lines that were fun, and I'm sure others who don't need to believe in characters and feel plots could be real will love this. For me it was just over Didn't Like, just under Good.
Stars: 2.5, a good idea but lacking reality for me.
ARC supplied for review purposes by Netgalley and Publishers