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Spotlight Review: A COSMIC KIND OF LOVE by Samantha Young

October 18, 2022

From the publisher:

One of Amazon’s Best Romances of October!

Space is the last thing an event planner and an astronaut need in this charming new romantic comedy from New York Times bestselling author Samantha Young.

When event planner Hallie Goodman receives party-inspiration material from the bride of her latest wedding project, the last thing she expects to find is a collection of digital videos from Darcy’s ex-boyfriend. Hallie knows it’s wrong to keep watching these personal videos, but this guy is cute, funny, and an astronaut on the International Space Station to boot. She’s only human. And it’s not long until she starts sending e-mails and video diaries to his discontinued NASA address. Since they’re bouncing back, there’s no way anyone will ever be able to see them…right?

Christopher Ortiz is readjusting to life on earth and being constantly in the shadow of his deceased older brother. When a friend from NASA’s IT department forwards him the e-mails and video messages Hallie has sent, he can’t help but notice how much her sense of humor and pink hair make his heart race.

Separated by screens, Hallie and Chris are falling in love with each other, one transmission at a time. But can they make their star-crossed romance work when they each learn the other’s baggage?
https://amzn.to/3ENh73h

An astronaut and a party planner fall in love, but both have to deal with their very messy families and their own past mistakes. Chris was dating Darcy for a couple of years before his mission to the Space Station, where he was stationed for five months. During his time up there, he recorded videos to send home to Darcy. But when he got back, he found out she was cheating on him and he ends their relationship. Darcy gets engaged to the other man, and a party planner works on their engagement party.

Hallie is the party planner, and she is a real people-pleaser, which isn’t a bad thing in her line of work. While working on the engagement party, Darcy emails her a file with the pertinent information, but doesn’t know (or care) that she also included all the videos that Chris had sent her. Hallie starts watching the first one, realizes that this is personal and she probably shouldn’t be watching it, but she is so drawn to Chris that she just can’t help herself. She watches all the videos, then feels so guilty she decides to record her own, apologizing for watching them, and sends them to the email address from the videos. When Chris gets Hallie’s video, he is annoyed that she watched his at all, and tells NASA to have it look like her email bounced. Undeterred, Hallie decides she like recording videos that no one will see, and she does a few more and they all bounce.

Little does she know that Chris has been watching her personal videos, and he is smitten with the party planner with the pink hair. When his ex invites him to the engagement party, he figures that Hallie will be there so he goes. That’s a long meet-cute, but it works. Chris and Hallie hit it off, especially when the first thing she does is apologize to him for watching his videos. But he likes her too much to admit he did the same, he wants to get to know her first.

Hallie and Chris fall into a friendly relationship. He is at a crossroads in his life; he resigned from the Air Force, and he knows he doesn’t want to go back out into space, but until he figures out his next move, it doesn’t seem fair to get involved in a romantic relationship, as much as he likes Hallie. And Hallie is falling for Chris, too – until he friend-zones her.

The ups and downs of their relationship keep them both reeling, not to mention they both have a lot of family issues they are also dealing with. But this is a romance, and even though the odds seem insurmountable, love always wins out. At least in fiction it does.

This was an engaging story with interesting characters, a bit of heat, and the requisite happy ending. I didn’t know a whole lot about astronauts and the Space Station, so I really enjoyed learning more about that, which was just the icing on the cake. A Cosmic Kind of Love is my kind of book – don’t miss it!

A COSMIC KIND OF LOVE by Samantha Young. Berkley (October 18, 2022). ISBN: 978-0593438619. 416p.

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Posted by Stacy Alesi

THE IDEA OF YOU by Robinne Lee

October 14, 2022

From the publisher:

Solène Marchand, the thirty-nine-year-old owner of an art gallery in Los Angeles, is reluctant to take her daughter, Isabelle, to meet her favorite boy band. But since her divorce, she’s more eager than ever to be close to Isabelle. The last thing Solène expects is to make a connection with one of the members of the world-famous August Moon. But Hayes Campbell is clever, winning, confident, and posh, and the attraction is immediate. That he is all of twenty years old further complicates things.

What begins as a series of clandestine trysts quickly evolves into a passionate and genuine relationship. It is a journey that spans continents as Solène and Hayes navigate each other’s worlds: from stadium tours to international art fairs to secluded hideaways in Paris and Miami. For Solène, it is a reclaiming of self, as well as a rediscovery of happiness and love. When Solène and Hayes’ romance becomes a viral sensation, and both she and her daughter become the target of rabid fans and an insatiable media, Solène must face how her romantic life has impacted the lives of those she cares about most.

Included on The Skimm’s 2020 list of Eight Books Both You and Mom Will Love
https://amzn.to/3RYXOXt

I had not heard of this debut novel that came out in 2017 until I received an email from a publicist with Amazon Original Movies. More on that later. I asked for a copy of the book to review but I found it at my library. I read it in a day and to be honest, it is a first novel and it shows. It is also purported to be a romance but is missing the main element of romance, the happy ending. Instead of romance, I would call this more of an erotic love story.

Sophie is a divorced mom with a 13 year-old-daughter, Isabelle. Her ex, Daniel, had left her for a much younger woman, but the marriage was doomed anyway. Sophie owns a contemporary art gallery, and her ex didn’t want her to work at all. He’s a very successful entertainment lawyer, and these are very wealthy people. When Daniel flakes out on taking Isabelle to see her favorite boy band, August Moon, in Las Vegas, Sophie steps up and takes Isabelle and two of her friends. They even have backstage passes to meet the band.

The young teens are all in love with these British boys in the band, and when Sophie meets Hayes, their leader/founder/songwriter, she can see why. He is beautiful, and he seems to be intrigued with her. But he’s twenty years old, and she is, as she puts it, thirty-nine and a half. So twice his age. Nevertheless, he pursues her, and she agrees to meet him for a drink.

Hayes is really turning on the charm and Sophie decides she can just use the young man for sex and then move on. Except he keeps pursuing her and he is obviously paying attention to everything she says, and he is much more mature than one would assume. He’s also very smart and good with people.

It turns into a full-blown affair, with Sophie and Hayes meeting up in various cities around the world as she grows her art gallery business and he is doing concerts with the band. For a long while, Sophie assumes he is seeing other women as they only get together every month or so, and while he never confirms it, he never denies it, either. And when he finally tells her he is not seeing anyone else, she is relieved. They are falling in love but are also keeping their affair a secret. When they are spotted together, Sophie claims that he is just a client. Her business partner and friends soon know, but Sophie is afraid to tell her daughter, who is madly in love with Hayes.

Eventually, some salacious pictures come out, and the world knows. This turns Sophie into a pariah, replete with death threats and the usual internet trolling. At this point it becomes like watching a train wreck; you know it isn’t going to end well, yet you can’t look away.

There is a lot of explicit sex in this book as their relationship is based on sex before it grows into something more. It’s a nice change to see the older woman/younger man relationship and it is a very fast read as you follow Sophie and Hayes around the world, having sex. Fashionistas will love all the designer name-dropping, and women in their thirties & forties will identify with Sophie and love escaping with Sophie & Hayes.

So, the Amazon publicist sent info about the film and a picture of the lead actor, Nicholas Galitzine, who plays Hayes, and informed me that Anne Hathaway is playing Sophie. That this is an Amazon Prime movie shouldn’t be a surprise as more and more actors that dominate the film industry are showing up on streaming television. Hathaway was excellent in “WeCrashed” on Apple+ TV, a limited series based on the downfall of WeWork. The role was very different for her and I thought she did a phenomenal job, even though she was ignored at awards time. But I digress…here are all the details I’ve gotten so far. I couldn’t help but notice that there are several discrepancies from the book, so I’m assuming this is the direction the film is taking:

Today it was announced that Nicholas Galitzine will star in Prime Video’s The Idea of You in the role of ‘Hayes Campbell,’ alongside Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway.
The film, based on Robinne Lee’s bestselling contemporary love story of the same name, centers on Sophie (Hathaway), a 40-year-old divorced mother. Sophie’s husband Dan left her for a younger woman, and now he has canceled his Coachella trip with their 15-year-old daughter. Sophie picks up the pieces and braves the crowds and desert heat. There, she meets 24-year-old Hayes Campbell (Galitzine), the lead singer of the hottest boy band on the planet, August Moon.
Galitzine will next be seen in Prime Video’s highly anticipated romantic comedy Red, White & Royal Blue, based on Casey McQuiston’s fan-favorite and instant New York Times and USA Today best-selling novel of the same name and Bottoms from MGM’s Orion Pictures. He also recently starred as the male lead in Netflix’s Purple Hearts, alongside Sofia Carson, and as ‘Prince Robert’ in Prime Video’s Cinderella, opposite Camila Cabello. Prior to that, he starred as the male lead in Zoe Lister-Jones’ The Craft: Legacy. On the television side, he can be seen in Netflix’s Chambers. Some of Galitzine’s other credits include A24’s Share, Handsome Devil, The Beat Beneath My Feet, The Changeover, and The Watcher in the Woods.
Michael Showalter (The Big Sick, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Dropout) will direct. Academy Award winning producer Cathy Schulman (Crash, The Woman King) will produce the film via her Welle Entertainment label, joined by I’ll Have Another’s Gabrielle Union, Anne Hathaway via her Somewhere Pictures label, Robinne Lee, Eric Hayes, Michael Showalter, and Jordana Mollick. Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein, Friends with Kids) wrote the screenplay and will executive produce. I’ll Have Another’s Kian Gass will also executive produce.
The Amazon Original Movie will premiere on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide at release. Production will begin in October.

10/2022 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE IDEA OF YOU by Robinne Lee. St. Martin’s Griffin; 1st Edition (June 13, 2017). ISBN:‎ 978-1250125903. 384p.