The Secret Life of a Dream Girl by Tracy Deebs

Blurb:
Disclaimer: This Entangled Teen Crush book contains adult language, references to drinking and drugs, and a kiss so steamy it’ll fog up your ereader.

Hiding in plain sight is harder than it looks…

Dahlia Greene—aka international pop superstar Cherry—is undercover as a normal high school student. She just wants to experience what real life is like, so when she overhears hottie Keegan Matthews nervously talking about liking a girl, she sees the perfect opportunity to live a real life and play a little matchmaker. What was not part of the plan was falling for a guy she can never tell the truth.

Keegan Matthews has been secretly crushing on Dahlia ever since she started at his school. Sure, Dahlia thinks he’s crushing on some other girl—not realizing his Dream Girl is actually her—but he figures, play along with her tips to woo someone else, let her get to know him, and then make his move. But with so many secrets in the mix, their romance is doomed from the start…

    

My Review:
4 stars — I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

So this is my second book from the Creative HeArts series (I previously read Mariely and Cabot’s story Crazy, Stupid Fauxmance), and I think I’ve figured out the pattern in them — they can be read as standalones from each other (though you will become curious about the other characters b/c you get drive by mentions of them), but they seem to each be setting up their own multi-book story arcs.  So yet again I was left feeling a bit unfulfilled by the ending, but at least this time I wasn’t blind-sided by it.  It’s like when reading Mariely and Cabot’s story, I saw on Goodreads that it says “Mariely and Cabot book 1” or whatever, but at that point I didn’t quite understand the ramifications of that.  Sometimes when there are multiple books with the same couple, you might get a HFN, if not an HEA.  I found that with this book we got a bit more of a HFN than we did with Crazy, Stupid Fauxmance, but I guess I still felt like the pacing was a bit weird with how these were laid out.  It makes me want to wait for all the books in the series to be out so I can just binge them.

OK, sorry for that huge aside, I was just getting my thoughts out.  I actually really enjoyed this one.  I enjoy the whole rockstar in disguise trope, and I really felt for Dahlia (or Cherry).  We didn’t delve too deeply into her past, so you don’t see concrete examples of how her father used her, but it is alluded to heavily.  And she really is in a tricky position trying to stay under the radar so no one realizes who she really is.  Sometimes I find it hard to believe when no one recognizes the star who is incognito, but I bought the explanations in this book.  She definitely had a lot going on inside her, but I feel like there’s still so much more to learn about her.

And Keegan had my heart breaking.  I lost my father to cancer when I was a teenager, so I can really feel for everything he’s going through in that part of his personal life.  And then on the other hand, he was so fricking adorable with how much he liked Dahlia and how nervous he was about it all!  I just wanted to squeeze him.  There was some interesting depth to his character that I loved (with him being in this arts school, but not really having a particular art that he is talented in).

And the chemistry between these two was just fantastic!  That kiss!!!  Holy smokes, that kiss.  *swoon*  I loved the romance in this book.  It was both sweet and hot.

And damn it all, yet again I want to read Finn’s book (book 2), even though I’m pretty sure it’s an even less satisfying ending than books 3 and 4 were.  Maybe I’ll wait until the next installment is almost out and then get into it.

So basically my only disappointment with this book is that I don’t have concrete answers on when more is coming out.  Because I’m uber greedy like that.  😛  But you can bet your bippy I will be all over it when it does come out!  No pressure Ms. Deebs.  *snicker*