I really enjoyed the dynamics between the characters in this book. Fake dating to love, along with its complicated elements created a brilliant read.

This was a really fun and delightful read. I absolutely adored our two main characters and their chemistry. I can't wait to see whats next!

This was a surprisingly moving read. William Chapman is a talented actor who lost everything after one bad night. Now he's struggling to make his life over as a kindergarten teacher. But the paparazzi won't let up, and neither will his actor father and actress-producer mother. They conspire to force him to Vermont to help his father run lines for his next movie.

His mother's dog-sitter believes in him, sometimes a bit too much, and keeps forcing him forward. Will resists because of his own low self-image.

The dog-sitter has another agenda, at least at the start. The movie is based on his late brother's autobiographical book, and he'll do anything to make sure it's a success. Including seduce Will? It's a delight to see these two move slowly toward each other.

Really wanted to like this book, but it started off soooooo slow, I missed the point from the very start and found the book to be waaaaay too long, definitely some parts could be removed or reduced to improve the story. Unfortunately I DNF at 30%.

Note: thanks publishers and netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

This is definitely an underrated book! The characters are flawed, realistic people, which I ALWAYS love. It's a slow burn and did read a little slow in the beginning, but once I got invested, I couldn't put it down. This was a solid debut for this author and I'm looking forward to what he puts out next.

it's fun - with some sweet characters. but overall it's a lot. A lot a lot. Some things are a bit too messy (the weird shift to melodrama and thriller) and others too neat (that'd be a spoiler I think...). Also, not enough smut to be smutty but too much to be vanilla (and way too many people involved in who is bottoming whom and why/when/where).

*free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This book was so much more than I was hoping for. I was hoping for a cute rom-com with some hijinks around a comeback, some secrets and hidden identity. What Barker has crafted in Love on the D-List is a very emotional and deep exploration of some really heavy topics - cancer, suicide, illness, trauma and forgiveness.

William Chapman comes from a dynasty of actors. He got his own big break as a teenager, but after attacking his handsome co-star, his career plummeted, ignoring the fact he has no memory whatsoever of the attack. When his father tries to rope him into a role for his upcoming movie, he's reluctant, having left Hollywood behind. James is desperate to get on set of the movie - it is based on the memoir of his late brother and he just knows William Chapman is going to fuck it up. He gets himself close by working as the dog walker for William's mother. And may have accidentally lied and said his nephew was his son.

First off, despite my opening paragraph, the book is very funny. It's witty, it's charming. William and James, and really the whole ensemble of characters, feel fully formed and real, without being carbon copies of actual Hollywood celebrities. The book is riddled with character growth and depths, and facing truly challenging emotional situations. I cried once or twice.

Love on the D-List just ended up being so much more than I bargained for, and I feel so grateful to have read it.

I loved it. It gave me Alexis Hall vibes. The Vermont setting was pretty accurate in the details. Most of the locations where made up which makes sense.

The cover and premise of this book is what drew me into the story. J.R. Barker uses a successful formula similar to “Red, White, and Royal Blue” and “Boyfriend Material” and I foresee this being a popular read! The slow burn and redemption arc was completely worth the wait and it was electric once we reached the climax.

This book was seriously entertaining. It was so cute and I loved that we got to see got to see so many family members in the story.

I'm a sucker for fake relationship romances, and this book didn't disappoint. There's a lot of drama here, and it wasn't always an easy read, so while I went in expecting a cute romance, I got a lot more than that.

This is definitely a cute romance, absolutely, but Will and James face a lot of struggles over the course of the story. There's a large cast of background characters, adding both depth and conflict. There's much more to everyone than it seems in the first 50 or even 100 pages. This is a story that slowly unravels over the course of the entire books, and the reader slowly begins to understand exactly who these characters are and the struggles of their past that make them who the are now.

Such a great book! I had so much fun reading it! Yes, there were a lot of very dramatic moments that made me cry... but I still loved it. It felt so real at some point. The plot got a little confusing by the end but it was still pretty great. I would love to read more from you... maybe we could have a sequel?

I hated this. There was so much albelist language, so many outdated terms for mental illnesses not to mention the amount of slurs this book is awful I'm sorry

Love on the D-List by J.R. Barker is an entertaining look at what happens if your family is all in the entertainment industry and you choose to leave, only to be sucked back in again.

Will used to be an actor but is now teaching. However when his father is dying and he's caught up in a paparazzi scandal, he leaves his teaching to join his father's final movie.

I was hooked with this story to begin with but got a bit bored towards the end as the story dragged slightly. If you like the film industry, you'll love this book.

4.5 Stars!!
This book was so incredible. From the beginning I felt like I was entering not just the main story but the lives of Travis and James and William from their most heartbreaking moments to their best hours. Im so happy that Will finally found the love he deserved and seeing him go through the process of forgiving himself was so real and raw that I cried. Overall the book is amazing and I reccomend it to anyone who is interested in reading about two men who finally find their soulmate and have to go through hell and bsck to realize it.

Und hat mich ein harmloses Cover und ein seichter Klappentext mich mal wieder verleitet, einen vermeintlichen Easy-Read bei @netgalleyde anzufragen? Yes! Ex-Promi versucht Comeback und hat deshalb Fake-Beziehung mit den Hundesitter der berühmten Frau Mutter. Klingt ja ... okay für Zwischendurch. Im Grunde ist das auch die Story aber es steckt um einiges mehr dahinter. Was wie das amerikanische Setting von BOYFRIEND MATERIAL wirkt entwickelt sich zu einer Geschichte über die Macht der Presse, Hating in der Öffentlichkeit, zu früher Ruhm, Übergriffige Manager, Missbrauch auf so vielen Ebeben. Daneben Trauerbewältigung, Demenz, Krebs, Tod .... yeah. Echt sonnig wenn man das so liest. Aber tatsächlich ist das Buch auch verdammt lustig. Das bewundere ich an dieser Art Büchern sehr. Wenn in "seichten" Plot echt deepe Themen verpackt werden und mit Humor gewürzt werden. Betrunkene Supermodels die aus dem Nähkästchen reden. Herrlich. Und wenn ein in Ungnade gefallener Jungschaupieler plötzlich mit einem Karaokevideo zu Celine Dions "Ir's all coming Back to me now" viral geht .... genau meine cup of Tea.

This book was everything and then some! It is a romantic, dramatic, fun, exciting, spicy, queer novel that is long enough to feel like youve watched two or three seasons of a TV show (in a good way). Honestly most of the contemporary books I've read like this always feel too rushed in either the development of the relationship or the general plot and Love on the D-List was neither of those things.

J.R. Baker took his time giving us a very well thought out and deep plot with plenty of highs and lows and twists and turns. Its so much more than you would expect it to be from the title or cover and i really enjoyed it! Will is such a great MC that I just wanted to wrap up in a blanket and protect. I was rooting for him the entire book! Definitely a great read and I will be looking forward to checking out more of this authors work!

I got this eARC through Netgally, thanks to the author and publisher for making this available!

This book might just be the longest, sweetest queer romance book I've read to date! I laughed, I cried, I cringed, and I yelled at this book, and I think that is a pretty cool feat of the author. The main characters were awesome, but the side characters were harder to keep apart. I'm still only 75% sure I know the difference between Ryan and Andy.

I loved that there was a mystery strewn throughout, the question of what happened that night 10 years ago, that so thoroughly derailed Will's acting career. I think at the half-way point, I started to figure it out, and I'm so proud of myself for having done so! Still, I feel like the ending was a bit rushed, and I'm still not sure what exactly happened with the drugging and why it happened the way it happened...I feel like this book could've used a little bit more critical editing. But most of the things I tripped on were minor, easily overcome, and most of all I enjoyed myself immensely, reading this wonderfully queer, Hollywood romance. I can recommend this book to anyone!

This book was the full banana and I loved it. The start was a little slow, but once this book picked up steam, it was a roller coaster I couldn’t put down.

Will is an actor who had a promising career until one drunken night ten years ago ruined everything. Now he teaches kindergarten, apologizes too much, and makes himself small. And then everything goes sideways, several times over, after a paparazzo captures the run-in between Will and the actor he allegedly attacked that night. Enter James, who is the reason that paparazzo was at Will’s brother’s bachelor party. James buys into the bad press about Will and doesn’t want Will playing his brother in the movie adaptation of the memoir his brother wrote before dying. James soon discovers Will isn’t a monster, just a sad boy, and sets about to help Will anyway he can, by getting him back into the movie, fake dating him, not putting up with Will’s self-loathing, and eventually solving the mystery of what happened ten years ago.

I love a group of dysfunctional side-characters and the ones in this book delivered. I didn’t expect to end up loving Will’s parents the way I did, but they had me in stitches with their antics and their plots. Speaking of plots, I think that’s what I loved most about this book—it took me on a ride. Not a lot of romances do that these days, but this one just kept getting crazier and crazier and I ate it up. Delightfully bonkers with a cast of characters who could pull it off while also putting me through all the feels.

I read through a few reviews before sitting down to write this one and a few people mentioned some problematic language. I think the author must have revised after those reviews, because I didn’t see the things they were talking about (and usually I notice stuff like that). There are definitely some trigger warnings (suicide, terminal illness, drinking, body image, among others) to take into account but overall I enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who loves a celebrity + normal person, fake dating, angst but also humor, rollercoaster of a book.

this was a cute romance book but nothing special either, I finished it in a few sittings as it was a cute easy read but some of it was very meh for me. I just didnt connect with them at all personally.