Review: By Degrees

By Degrees by Elle Casey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The rating is an average, I loved the first half of the book but the second half was a YA soup of every cliche known to man.

Scarlett Barnes is known as The Normalizer, she specialises in actors and rock stars who are spiralling downwards and rescues them with a combination of clean living, exercise and redirection of their talents with art. Her latest project is bad boy rocker Tarin Kilgour, he's drinking, partying and taking drugs - all of which is jeopardising his upcoming European tour. Tarin's agent hires Scarlett and gives her carte blanche.

At the start Scarlett is in control, she's a badass woman at the top of her game, in demand and able to call all the shots. She's simply the best. Her sassy one-liners and supreme self-confidence were brilliant to read. But of course the instant she meets Tarin her defences start to crumble, all her sass goes out the window and she becomes a poor helpless woman. Maybe that's partly because she hasn't had sex since her childhood sweetheart, the love of her life, the singer Austin Betzer, died.

When Austin is first introduced to Scarlett he is understandably belligerent, dismissive, arrogant and charming, until Scarlett mentions Austin, then his attitude suddenly changed. As a reader this was a RED FLAG, I can't stress how many times Tarin says or does something and the super-intelligent Scarlett wonders "what can that mean?". Then she decides that it would be okay to get drunk at her client's home, even though she won't allow him any alcohol, to play truth or dare, and to have sex in the family room. Because nothing screams professional like a drunken one-night stand whilst you are supposed to be working right?

Scarlett is one of those women. The ones who scrape their hair into a pony tail, have rats nest hair from sleeping while it was still damp, wearing no more make-up than a slick of lip gloss and yet pretty much every man she has ever met is in love with her. She is also pretty harsh to the girlfriends and groupies that hang around famous musicians - solidarity sister!

As we entered the second half of the book I don't think Scarlett ever stopped crying, well maybe to jump to a conclusion or two but that's about it. At about the same time EVERY single man in her life (Tarin, Austin's little brother Scott, her last client Nick) suddenly becomes a psychologist and decides that they know better than Scarlett what she really thinks/ wants/ means - because of course she's not got a schlong so she must be wrong - right?

I was sooo close to DNFing this book at 91% - that was how irritating I found the entire thing. Of course this is a new twist to my love/hate relationship with Elle Casey's novels. Usually I either love or hate them - this one I both loved and hated !

View all my reviews