Review: Reach for the Stars: A feel good, uplifting romantic comedy

Reach for the Stars: A feel good, uplifting romantic comedy by Kathy Jay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Two and a half stars.

First off, this is clearly part of a series and whilst it can be read as a stand-alone there are definitely things that happened in the previous book(s) which are referenced. I was a bit confused at first when there were references to Layla's parents' divorce and her not speaking much to her father anymore which clearly harked back to events in a previous book.

Layla Rivers and her serious boyfriend live in a small Cornish village. They have saved and saved and are planning to go travelling, the night before they are due to leave Layla's mother is badly injured in a car accident. Layla stays behind but her boyfriend Joe leaves without her, and no concern for her mother.

Nearly a year later Layla discovers that Joe has got married whilst on holiday. To add insult to injury his new wife Lainy looks very similar to Layla. When she walks into her best friend Maggie's cottage to continue with the redecorating she is doing while Maggie and her husband Alex are in London with their twin babies she finds Alex's twin brother Nick lying asleep on the sofa. Alex and Nick are actors and starred in a tv vampire series (think Vampire Diaries).

Nick Wells is at a bit of a crossroads in his life. The tv series is over and he has just finished filming an action film, when he was filming the vampire series his exaggerated reputation as a ladies man was publicity for the series but now he's turned to films its a bit of a burden. Added to which he has just been told out of the blue that he has an eleven year old daughter, how must she feel seeing all that gossip about her father in the papers? After his current girlfriend (a European princess no less) dumps him and he got a black eye from a wayward camera lens, Nick decides to rusticate in Cornwall away from the paparazzi and LA.

Layla and Nick met at Maggie and Alex's wedding, there is an undeniable attraction and as they live in close proximity they give in to their feelings. But what starts out as a holiday fling soon develops into more.

I didn't really get the feels for this book. Most fundamentally, I didn't 'feel' the attraction between Layla and Nick as anything more than Layla thinking he was a handsome actor. Indeed when they first came together I made a note on my Kindle 'where did that come from?'. There were no lingering glances or accidental touches, just, boom. And there was so much of it.

There was a lot of strange volte-faces where one or the other would be ecstatically happy and then suddenly be unhappy or angry - and I never understood why. At one point they had just made love, were still entwined and "Reality hit him like a nasty headline" - why? Which brings me to another point, the tendency towards purple prose.

Overall, Layla was a character who seemed to wilfully ignore the truth. If someone told her it was raining outside she wouldn't believe them. Over and over someone would tell Layla something and she would brush it off, 'he's just saying that', 'it's the heat of the moment, he doesn't mean it' over and over again. It got tiresome. And don't get me started on how many times she bit her lip, I think she must have permanent scars!

I've focused on what didn't work for me and it might feel like a hatchet job but this was still a sweet rebound romance with a sexy actor, there's Paris, there's a dog and there's a sassy policeman called Mervyn.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews