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After reading Learning Curves, I decided to pick up another Molly O'Hare since it worked for my Love Has Sprung prompt Office Romance. I decided to pick up her debut book Hollywood Dreams. I was also able to use it to cover the prompt Back to December (published in December) for the Taylor Swift Quarterly Challenge. Now this is listed on the cover as a part of the Holly Hopeful series, but from what I've been able to find, there is no series page and no other books have been published in it at this time.
Maggie's been in Hollywood trying to make it big as an actress. When she gets a minor role in the latest movie for Hollywood superstar and bad boy Trevor, they start off on the wrong foot. After she accidentally walks in on him in a delicate situation, Trevor gets angry and jumps to conclusions about who she is and why she's on set. As they keep running into each other, Trevor starts to reflect on his own feelings and understand why he keeps seeking her out to push. When Maggie second guesses his feelings after the way she's been treated by him, Trevor has some groveling to do... big time.
So first off, I do want to mention that this is Molly's debut novel. There are moments that are gems in here that I really enjoyed and you can see the start of how that will evolve to her more current releases. The big issue here though is both Trevor and Maggie. Now this is a bigger enemies to lovers than I usually prefer and there are a lot of hurtful things that Trevor says to Maggie in the beginning. Now, we do get his perspective and can see that he just can't stop himself from goading her and at least internally regrets what he's saying as it comes out or immediately after. Now, yes he says some terrible things or doesn't speak out when other people do, but I do also think that not only did Trevor need to do some big reflecting on himself, but Maggie needed to chill a little bit. I completely understand why she fought back and that she was on the more on the feistier side, but I think she also needed to have a little more grace for Trevor, especially with the first big meeting. He is a top billed movie star, constantly tracked and harassed by the media and paparazzi. While he took it a little too far after the fact, for him to jump to conclusions when being walked in while in an intimate situation with someone else is understandable. I just didn't like that Maggie completely went from zero to absolutely loathe. I also didn't like her wishy-washy-ness with sleeping with Trevor but that's it.
Let's talk about what I did like here though. Now in Learning Curves one of my biggest issues was with side characters. Here, that was not the case. I loved the friends of both Maggie and Trevor. I loved how they were supportive and were able to both joke around, but also be serious and have "real talk" when it was needed. I love when our main characters have good friends that are properly supportive and it just really made the situation between Trevor and Maggie a lot more palatable for me. For being her debut novel though, I liked the concept and can see how this was the jumping point for her writing career.
This was fun to go back and read Molly's debut after getting through a few of her newer releases. It's always fun to compare and see how an author grows and improves. I'm excited to continue getting through Molly O'Hare's backlist and can hopefully catch up before her next release! Her books are just feel-good, fluffy fun!
Have you read Hollywood Dreams?
Bookishly Yours,
Stasi🍎
STATISTICS: Hollywood Dreams, Molly O'Hare, 3.5 stars, 1 day, eBook, 244 pages, published in 2017, indie published
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