Review - Glitter Baby by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Glitter Baby

By: Susan Elizabeth Phillips

 Goodreads

Blurb:

Fleur Savagar is the most beautiful woman in the world . . . to everyone but herself. With her oversized hands and paddle-boat feet, her streaky blond hair and funny green eyes, she lives a life filled with secrets that began before she was born. That was when her bewitching mother left home to find James Dean and met Errol Flynn instead. Now Fleur has to grow up quickly, and life won't make that easy.

Jake Koranda is both New York's most brilliant playwright and Hollywood's hottest actor. Difficult, talented, and tormented, he has no patience for international glamour girls, not even ones with beautiful bodies and smart-aleck mouths. But there's more to the Glitter Baby than shine, and Fleur's tougher than Jake expects. Even with the odds stacked against her, she's fiercely determined to discover the woman she's destined to be.

An ugly duckling who can't believe she's turned into a swan . . . A tough-guy movie star with a haunted past . . . In a land of broken dreams, can two unlikely lovers trust their hearts?

Amazon

WARNING: This is not your usual light-hearted, fun read by SEP.

It’s no secret that I absolutely love SEP’s books, so it comes as no surprise that this was another “LOVE IT” read for me. But…if you’re looking for a funny, light-hearted romantic comedy as SEP graces us with quite often, this book is NOT for you. If you love in depth characters and solid plot lines with dark, sordid stories then I would definitely recommend Glitter Baby.

WHAT I LIKED:

The characters, they drive the story. They are deep and scarred and perfectly imperfect.

You have Belinda Savagar, Fleur’s mother, who is in love with…well, with herself and the idea of being a starlet. A stage mom at her worst, Belinda is manipulative and conniving, all in the name of “love” for her Glitter Baby. When it comes to seeing her daughter succeed, there’s not much (or many) she won’t do. And somehow through her twisted, misguided attempts to love her daughter, I really think she does.

Then there’s the Glitter Baby herself, Fleur Savagar, an exceptional woman despite her upbringing. She’s abandoned by her father and placed on an unsteady pedestal by her crazy mother. How could anyone with this girl’s past NOT be totally screwed up…and yet, she isn’t. Feeling awkward and alone, sent to a convent as a child, Fleur grows into a majestic swan, becoming the world’s most successful model and actress all before she’s twenty. But still she feels like the ugly duckling of her youth even as she searches the world for unconditional love.

Then there’s the villain, Alexi Savager, Fleur’s evil father who will risk anything and everything to extract his revenge on both his wife and daughter. And when I say anything…I mean anything. Creeper alert. To say the man is deplorable is putting it lightly. There were moments in this book that I closed my eyes and thought, “No…no…no…don’t do it.”

And last but certainly not least is our hero, Jake Koranda, or is he? He kind of seems like an ass most of the time. Jake is an actor, writer, director extraordinaire, Hollywood’s latest heart throb both on and off the silver screen. He’s thrust into the limelight he doesn’t want despite his flaws. Kind of like someone else we know… What most don’t know is that he’s an ass for a reason. Jake lives with demons from his past that make Freddie Krueger seem like Ronald McDonald. And he’ll die before he lets down his walls, especially to a glamor girl called Glitter Baby.

Somehow SEP is able to bring together three intriguing plots and four dynamic characters (actually more) into one epic love story. It’s dark, it’s depressing, and it’s real.

  

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

I didn’t get to really know our hero, Jake Koranda, not enough to empathize with him. I realize there was a lot going on with other characters in the book, but Jake’s story was so important, his past so critical to who he was, I just would have loved to see more development. But again, it wasn’t something that put me off so much that I hated the story. And the sub characters were just sleezy enough to make me forget I needed more Jakey.

CHARACTERS: 5 stars

PLOT: 4.5 stars

WRITING: 4 stars

OVERALL: 4.5 stars

Amazon

About The Author:

The Huffington Post says the books of Susan Elizabeth Phillips provide a “gateway drug to the whole [romance] genre,” which she assumes is a good thing. Bookpage magazine calls her “the crown jewel of romantic comedy writers,” which is definitely a good thing. Since she wrote her first novel on a typewriter in her kitchen, her books have been published in over 30 languages and appear on bestseller lists all over the world. 

In addition to being a New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, and USA Today bestseller, she is a hiker, lazy gardener, horrible singer, passable cook, passionate reader, wife, mother of two grown sons, and grandmother of two adorable little ones. Her newest book, HEROES ARE MY WEAKNESS, is now available in paperback. Susan is excited to announce her next book FIRST STAR I SEE TONIGHT, the next edition in the CHICAGO STARS SERIES, will be released Aug. 23, 2016. You can visit Susan on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or on her website.

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