2.7⭐️


Tengo que decir que me sorprendió que el tema de la dirección de películas se me hiciera aburrido, pensé que me encantaría, pero no.


Val se me hizo una snob y egoista, es una lástima que Maeve no tuviera povs porque era una persona agradable y le hubiera dado equilibrado a la lectura y un respiro de Valeria.



Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC in exchange for and honest review.

Thank you to #NetGalley and #Vintage for a free copy of #DirectorCut in exchange for an honest review!

Let me start by saying that I wanted to love this story. I am nothing if not a sucker for any kind of sapphic romance. Add in a dash of academia and Hollywood, and I should theoretically be a goner.

That was not the case with this book. I never skim books, and I found myself quickly skimming the final 50% just to complete. This review may contain spoilers, so beware!

I want to start by saying I LOVED Maeve. She was such a fun character! A beautiful, intelligent academic! Val on the other hand? She drove me up a wall! She was conceited, pretentious, annoying, inconsiderate, and rude. And the fact that this book was 100% from her point of view, I couldn’t wait to get out of her head. I understand this book relies heavily on the miscommunication trope (all because of Val), and a lot of that miscommunication is explained away due to mental illnesses. I am not in any way questioning the difficulty of living with anxiety paired with an uncomfortable physical illness as well like IBS (which Val also has). I am, however, uncomfortable with how the author is portraying mental illness in this book. All of it felt sloppy and not fully researched. It all felt like generalizations and stereotypes. I have anxiety, I am not on medication, and I have done the work to make sure I still find ways to communicate important things to my loved ones. Val has allegedly been in therapy since she was a child. Even without medication, she should have learned skills to prevent the major issues in this book.

Like I said, I wanted to love this book! I am not typically a tough reviewer. But this book just wasn’t the right fit for me. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

I received a free ebook from netgalley and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.

I devoured this book when I got it as I was very invested in seeing a HEA for Val (in this genre, that's not a spoiler, lol). I fell in love with Val listening to the audiobook for Sizzle Reel, and was curious to get more of her story. TBH, I was glad that I already was gone on Val, because I'm not sure I would have been so taken with Val had I only read this book. To be fair though, I listened to the audiobook for Sizzle Reel, and sometimes i just straight up prefer to listen to books rather than read them for the extra element of performance, so I'm actually really looking forward to listening to the audiobook when i get a chance (Val's voice was straight up swoony in SR).

Greenwald is great at her use of locations and world building as you can tell that she has very intimate knowledge of her settings (LA, and USC) and I felt the same mastery in her previous book Sizzle Reel as well.

I really appreciate queer, anxious, Jewish, LA (and midwest/OH) rep in her books.

It feels odd and pedantic to mention, but the midwest jewish representation didn't resonate with my experience and understanding: It feels different to be Jewish in a red state like Ohio than in LA, and I'm sure it feels different to be Jewish in Northeast Ohio vs the smaller college town of Gambier (100,000 jews in NEO in 2023 vs Kenyon college's hillel says it serves about 300 undegrad students, but Gambier as a whole according to this site which doesn't seem very official says 0.0% https://www.bestplaces.net/religion/city/ohio/gambier). Greenwald's grasp of the midwest did not feel as rich as that of her LA settings.

I feel really nit-picky bringing it up, but it was niggling at me: I think it would have bothered me less had Maeve been from a place like NE Ohio where there are plenty of Jews, or to have addressed being only one of fewer jews in a less populated area which is a different experience all together.

Like I said, I'm still excited to listen to the audiobook, and I'm glad that Greenwald continues to write characters that are queer, Jewish, and anxious, among other things. (I'm also just a sucker for hollywood/LA romances), and I look forward to reading her future work.

This book was very sweet- very heartwarming. I really enjoyed Maeve and Val as characters. I love that they are both strong, intelligent women. I love that it explores real life issues while advocating for GLBT rights. Balancing careers, relationships, friendships, etc is not easy, but finding a way to do it is so important.

Romantic novels generally aren’t my favorite as they feel pretty textbook (no pun intended)- meet, fall in love, have an almost-relationship-ending issue, reconcile, live happily ever after…. But this was sweet and I enjoyed reading about Maeve and Val.

While this book was a little slow to pull me in, I really enjoyed it at the end and found myself rooting for Val, Maeve, and even Charlie (!) throughout the whole story. I loved that the author tied in some mental health struggles and showed how Val handled it. I think it’s so important to have representation in books!

Director's Cut by Carlyn Greenwald is a book that follows celebrity actress Valeria Sullivan after her coming out as she attempts to sort out what she wants with her career and her romantic life as she meets and falls in love with co-teacher Maeva Arko. This book is an insta-love book (and insta-lust) which may work for some, but was not my favorite. I did like the relationship between Maeve and Val once they got to explore their emotions together, and I did like that this book had some very frank discussions of mental health and even Val's IBS. There was also a lot of discussion about movie musical in the beginning of the book which I do think will be overwhelming to non-musical fans but may be nice for big theater kids. Overall I think this romance will appeal to some, but it was not my favorite.

This was my first read from this author and IM SO OBSESSED! Can I rate 1000/5??? It deserves it! I’m always nervous picking up books by a new author and I was not disappointed! I loved everything about this! From the story, to the writing, to the MCs! Everything was absolutely perfect! I cannot wait to pick up other titles by this author!

I enjoyed this well enough, I thought the little queer Hollywood group was wonderful, but I was never super invested in the tension between them. I found myself wishing it was a split perspective more often than not because I just couldn't understand what Maeve was thinking half the time. I think I'd reccomend this to anyone looking for a queer Hollywood romance, but I haven't found myself thinking about it much since finishing it.

With a perfect mix of Hollywood glamour, engaging academia, and authentic queer love, Director’s Cut brings movie magic to the page. Despite being a massive star, actor-turned-director Val is grounded and relatably messy, and her journey to finding love with Maeve — and with her authentic self — makes this story sing.

This was so cute!! I loved the cover as soon as I saw it. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I thought there was good mental health and physical health representation. I love Maeve and Val. They are great together and compliment each other so well. I loved watching them grow together and individually.
My main frustration was the fact that Val took so long to talk about her conflict. Miscommunication is something I struggle with in books. Although, I understand that because of Val's mental health, her past relationship and her not managing her mental health, it's not totally surprising that she struggled to rip the band aid off and talk about it.
I really loved all of the side characters as well. I loved the banter within the friend group. Overall I did enjoy this book and the way the author handled some sensitive topics.

3.5 I enjoyed this book enough and it would've gotten a 4 star review if it didn't take SO long for Val to tell Maeve her good news. There wasn't a good enough reason to me why she would've held in the secret for so long. The relationship between the two mains was sweet and believable. Cute story!

This was a really solid book from Carlin Greenwald. The Hollywood romance (celeb x regular person) was fun, there were great pieces of LA scattered throughout, and the characters were well developed.

I especially appreciated the diversity in this book, and the abundance of queer rep across the LGBTQ+ spectrum. This book had several spicy scenes, and showed different dynamics in queer sex that many similar books skip over in favor of more ’standard’ WW relations.

My only complaint was that the book felt a bit long at times. Sometimes it skipped around and was hard to follow a specific tangent, and other sections dragged out without any exciting elements.

I had also read Sizzle Reel by the same author, and enjoyed this book a lot more. I would encourage anyone who loves queer Hollywood romances to give this a shot, regardless of how you felt about Greenwald’s previous books.

**I was provided this book as an e-ARC. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this story and provide my honest opinion on it.**

I just really really loved this book.

I think we all go through times where we think we need to fully change careers or even just take a fully different direction in our lives because something isn’t meshing. Valeria experiences this after working to break into directing once she comes out and becomes pigeonholed in particular acting roles. Folks struggle to see her as anything beyond her sexuality though she tries to sway the focus to her professional endeavors.

While this seems futile, she leans into the world of academia and teaching - a space she became familiar with and invested in during pursuit of her PhD. Enter her co-professor, Maeve.

What unfolds is full of attempts to find your place, developing new passions, and making connections with those you wouldn’t have expected.

The writing of this story was witty, creative, and drew you into the characters. I was sad to see it end and would absolutely recommend it to my friends.

At twenty-nine, Valeria Sullivan is a celebrated, award-winning actress. But when her acting options start to decline and her attempt to transition to directing is complicated by a bad interview on a late night show, Val decides she’s had enough of Hollywood. Intent on pursuing a neglected passion, she pours herself into a guest professorship at USC, hoping to transition to academia fulltime. Standing in her way is her co-professor, Maeve Arko, whose brilliance and beauty is matched only by her contempt for Val. As Val rises to the challenges that teaching throws at her, though, Maeve starts to soften, and soon sparks are flying.

Now with a job and a girlfriend she adores, Val should be happy. But Hollywood isn’t done with Val quite yet. Her directorial debut, Oakley in Flames, starts getting attention, and soon Val has to choose between her obligations to her class—and Maeve—and the burgeoning dream Hollywood career she may not be ready to leave behind.

I love books set in academia, so I thought I'd give this one a shot. Overall, I enjoyed the changing dynamics between Maeve and Val. The romance itself fell a little flat for me (not exactly sure why), but overall I did enjoy it. I don't know much about the film industry, but this book felt like it was authentic. I haven't read this author before but want to check out her other books after this one!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced digital reader's copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review!

I don't have many thoughts on this book. The writing was great and I don't know much about the topic that Val and Maeve's class was about, but the scenes with a lot of information about it were easy to read and didn't feel excruciating to get through.

I liked Maeve and I would've loved it if her neurodivergence was developed more than the one or two mentions relating to it. I didn't connect much with Val's character outside of her representation of anxiety, but that could have been because I'm a bit younger than her, so there is a bit of a disconnect. I lost a little interest in some of the parts where Val was dwelling over her choices and whether she should be honest with Maeve, but overall the book was good.

I mostly enjoyed myself with this one, which is a huge improvement from my last couple of reads. This is definitely the palate cleanser I needed. With that said, I really wished I enjoyed this even more. There were some really great moments, especially when it came down to Val’s anxiety and her mental health, but ultimately, a big chunk of this story was me dreading the third act conflict, since it was so predictable.

Ok, let’s go back to the beginning. I did love the whole plotline of Val doing a teaching gig while taking a break in between her acting and directing debut. I especially loved the whole tension and antagonistic relationship she had with Maeve when she started working. It was so interesting during the moments when Val lectured to the class on filmography. However, once Val and Maeve stopped clashing and actually became friends, their tension kind of fizzled out, and once that happened, their emotional buildup just didn’t feel gradual at all. Not only that, but the “I love you’s” felt so sudden, which is probably because of all the time jumps.

By the time the third act conflict came around, I was just peeved at Val instead of invested in their romance. For the last 25% of the book, Val just gradually got worse with her self-sabotaging-as pointed out by Charlie-and I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wouldn’t even call it miscommunication, it was just Val refusing to be honest with her girlfriend about her career. I’m happy she sees her therapist on page, and we get to see her try to work out her anxiety with, but honestly, I wished the conflict between them was just not this in particular.

I think this book would have really benefited from Maeve’s perspective, especially for the first 30% of the book. I would have loved to see her during their back-and-forth, during the emotional wrought moments when talking about her ex, and towards the end of the book when she shows up in Canes.

My favorite part of the book was Charlie, Val’s best friend. He was always so supportive, and honestly a breath of fresh air. I also liked Val and Maeve together and how realistic they were as people, but I just think I would have enjoyed this more if we weren’t stewing in Val’s mind about keeping her film acceptance as a secret from Maeve for a pretty huge chunk of the book. That said, there were a lot of scenes that stood out, like the date at the museum (animal museum?), or the dinner with Val’s parents, and when they professed their first “I love you’s” to each other.

I honestly had a hard time getting through this one. And I was so excited when I saw it on NetGalley! It's a sapphic romance between an actor/director and an academic! It's set at USC! I go to USC! I'm an academic (in training?)! I love reading about academics and I love reading about actors/directors and I love sapphic romance, and it's set somewhere I spend a frankingly disgusting amount of time! So this should be perfect for me. And yet...

There's nothing offensively bad or distasteful about <i>Director's Cut</i>, it's just a bit too boring in a way that makes me wonder if I am perhaps a toxic person. Valeria is a 29-year old A-list actress who also has a PhD in popular music or something along those lines and is teaching a class at USC because she thinks she needs to pivot her career because her foray into directing has not been going well, and the roles she's been getting since coming out have not been to her liking. Her co-professor Maeve is a bit tetchy at first, but they work out their issues pretty quickly and then embark on a romance. The timeline also didn't sit right with me - the actual on-page events occur in a fairly truncated amount of time so everything develops a bit too quickly to have any particular weight. Valeria and Maeve are cute together - it's the kind of relationship I'd be rooting for if they were my friends - but they're ultimately boring once the slight animosity between them is resolved (not that they were super interesting before) and I honestly had a hard time caring about them or their relationship.

What made it harder to enjoy the book was Valeria's character and issues. Look, I get it - acting and academia are both careers that are loaded with insecurity and impostor syndrome and just crushing depression and self doubt. Here's a story: on the first day of my PhD at USC, we had a presentation about impostor syndrome. My cohort was a group of ~15 people where most already had a couple of publications, or they had won awards, or they had done some very impressive community work. In all honesty, I was probably the least impressive person there by any scholarly metric (I got in off a waitlist, so that tracks). When the PsyD giving us the presentation on impostor syndrome asked "who here feels like they don't deserve to be here?", <i>everyone</i> except me raised their hands. So I'm not saying that Valeria's borderline constant stream of self doubt and insecurity is unrealistic, but I am saying it's pretty tedious. This woman had her first dissertation rejected at age 24, quit academia to go into acting and became an A-list actor who was able to pivot into directing her own feature film and finish her PhD by age 29. This is an immensely successful career by any metric - even if she had taken an extra year to rework her initial dissertation, getting a PhD at 25 is, while no unheard of, pretty impressive (and she pretty much would have had to progress to her final year with absolutely no lost time to get there, even in the less time intensive UK system). It took her all of 5 years to pivot into acting, become very successful, and then pivot again into directing and get a feature film made. I swear I have sympathy for her and her issues, but I mostly just wanted to give her a good shake and tell her to snap out of it and stop being such a loser. I'm not a mean person, but Valeria really took me there.

Overall, a boring relationship, a boring plot, and a mind numbingly frustrating main character.

Reviewer's Note: I recevied a digital ARC of this book via Netgalley. The book is not set to be published until later in 2024 and I am posting this review in April of 2024.

Caryln Greenwald's "Director's Cut" was an excellent read for anyone who identifies as a theater kid: past, present, or future. Though I have not read Greenwald's novel, "Sizzle Reel," This book made sense without the context of the other and can be read as a stand alone. Now that I've decided I like the writing style and characters, I do plan to read the accompanying novel. Still, I enjoyed "Director's Cut" on its own.

Overall, I think Greenwald does a great job with character development. I really enjoyed both Val and Maeve's storylines and how they merged together. Valeria's mental health journey is incredibly relatable, and watching her manage her mental health was a very realistic despite her being an Oscar-award winning actress. The depicition of this queer relationship was also really healthy. The couple have a few very difficult conversations both about sex and their relationship apart from it. They unpack trauma together and don't have a traditional third act break up. I really like Greenwald's take on these familar tropes.

This novel is also very well researched when it comes to theater/musicals, film industry, etc. Greenwald could probably teach the course that Maeve and Val teach just based on the classroom scenes and light amounts of lecturing we get to read. If you told me that Greenwald has a cache of self-made college course syllabi and movie pitches, I would believe it. It is risky for an author to reference so many popular and well-known works, but Greenwald has definitely familiarized herself with the likes of popular musicals like Little Shop, Les Mis, etc. enough to include them in this novel.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and fell in love with the characters. I will reccomend it to my theater and queer friends.

This was a good book. I really love the world building and the characters. The pacing was really good and it was an interesting story to read

I'll be honest, I struggled a lot with the style of writing in this novel. It took me 3-4 different tries to be able to get through it. That being said, it's a fun novel if you're into the world of Hollywood glamour!

"Director's Cut" does a great job of intersecting Hollywood glamour with the less glamourous academic world, This was certainly a fresh and engaging Sapphic love story.

At the heart of the book is Valeria Sullivan, a celebrated actress at the cusp of her career transition, finds herself in an unexpected romance with her co-professor, Maeve Arko. Their journey from professional rivalry to romantic involvement was very interesting, especially when set against Val's struggles with her identity and career in the public eye.

This was a great story and a super authentic look at the love, mental health, authenticity, growth, and Fame!

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Carlyn Greenwald, and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.