Dazzled by Jane Harvey-Berrick

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Title: Dazzled
Author: Jane Harvey-Berrick
Published by: Indie
Release Date: September 10, 2013
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 358
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 #LetsReadIndie Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 New Adult Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ IndieBound
My rating:

Blurb:

When Hollywood calls, is the price for fame too high?

Miles Stephens is a young actor from London. Out of work, unemployable, and fired from his last job, he gets the chance to star in a break-out role in a big-time Hollywood film.

The film is a great success, propelling him to worldwide Hollywood fame – but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and the pressure starts to get to Miles.

Throughout, he is supported by his friend, Clare, the girl next door whom he grew up with – and who is secretly in love with him.

Miles finds out that fame and fortune isn’t everything he’d dreamed about

My Review:

2.5 stars — I should have DNF’d this one.  In the first few pages the heroine was slut shaming other women, and it was a portents of things to come.  But the thing is I LOVE celebrity romances, so I just kept going…kept hoping I guess.  See, the thing is that characters are VERY IMPORTANT to me in my enjoyment of a book, and I actively disliked Clare.  And Miles was OK, but I wasn’t that won over by him either.  And yet, I still read it all.  I still felt compelled to keep going.  I even stayed up late reading it.  And I’m really trying to figure out why, what was compelling for me…what did I enjoy?  It’s…to use a word my hubby makes fun of me for, vexing.

So the bad first.  I’m a sensitive person.  I like nice people.  I like kind people.  Meanness makes me uncomfortable.  I don’t watch reality TV for those reasons.  I totally get that no one is perfect, that I’ve probably judged people, that we all have flaws.  But not once did I get the impression from the author that Clare’s behavior was undesirable…  And she didn’t change and grow and become a better person over the course of the book, that was just how she was.  Her inner thoughts about basically every woman she met were just…horrible.  And there was a lot of reverse snobbery going on.  Because she was in love with Miles, and didn’t feel “on the same level” as him, she ended up cutting down every woman she encountered who showed interest in Miles.  That’s not cool with me.  And since I have a hard time describing this meanness, I’ll just give you a couple examples of her thoughts from when some young fans approach Miles:

Then two hideously underdressed women of about my age came over ‘to say hi’. Yeah, right. They were all miniskirts, strappy t-shirts and enough mascara to make a drag-queen blush. Tramps.

…I was wallpaper as far as those hideous hags were concerned. Eventually even their pea-brains seemed to realize that Miles wasn’t encouraging them, and they stumbled away on their sky-high heels that made their feet look like pig’s trotters.

So that’s Clare.  Not a lot redeemable about her.  I kept wondering if I was missing the humour, or missing sarcasm, but honest to god I don’t think I was.  She was untrusting, mean, whiny, occasionally unreasonable and insensitive.  I did appreciate the few times that she actually helped Miles make good decisions, and she did make me laugh occasionally with her one-liners.

As for Miles…well he’s supposed to be this awkward, shy, kind guy…and he does have some of that.  But he’s also ridiculously inappropriate at times, and quite frankly he wasn’t always that nice in his inner thoughts either.  When he was first meeting people in LA, he made a lot of inner judgements (calling people bitches and such).  He was also really stupidly oblivious.  It’s hard to fall for a guy whose self esteem is so low that he doesn’t notice when he’s being used, and doesn’t see that his girlfriend’s behavior is not on the up and up.  He did have some good moments where he made some really insightful comments about his role as Nuriel, and what he loved about being an actor.

I think their relationship and my own morbid curiosity over how it would work out is the major thing that compelled me to keep reading.  While I was bummed that a lot of the book had another woman in it, I do enjoy friends to lovers stories.  And while I wasn’t impressed with how the characters behaved as a whole, I enjoyed their interactions with each other.  When they finally got together, I was satisfied.  There was even a totally oddly told sex scene — all just thoughts, Clare then Miles then Clare, etc.  It was different and kind of fun.  I was a bit bummed that the ending seemed to come really fast and I didn’t know how they were going to deal with the public and the press about their relationship…felt like I was missing closure there.

Another thing I enjoyed were some of the great secondary characters…even ones that I didn’t expect to love (like Melody and Rhonda).  I loved Earl, but could tell I would love him immediately.  I thought all the parentals were cool.  And I enjoyed quite a few of the crew on the set (Polly, Merv, Leon and Mildred, and ESPECIALLY Jo-Anne).

One last thing for any other sensitive readers out there…Clare does use the R-word once in this book.  I realize that not everyone has jumped onto that bandwagon, but if it bothers you (as it does me), it is there in passing.

I’ll probably end up rounding up, just because I was compelled, and I try to be honest about my gut feelings.  But I feel like it was more like reading a bad accident…or as my hubby put it “sometimes you have a meal that’s not actually that great, but you still eat it all.”  That pretty much sums up this book.  I’m going to give this author one more try in case it was just these characters in particular like this…but if it’s a common attribute, then we’re definitely not a match.