Genuine Lies

Eve Benedict, queen of Hollywood, has decided at the end of a fruitful career to have her memoirs written. She hires Julia Summers to do the job, with the bonus intention of hooking Julia up with Eve's stepson, Paul. Unfortunately, Eve knows many secrets about some very powerful and dangerous individuals, one of whom will kill to keep them from coming to light. The first chapter reveals that someone does kill Eve, and that Julia is being charged with the murder.
Nora Roberts has been a queen of romantic novels for several decades now, and though this is some of her earlier work, it proves she deserves the title. The plot is suspenseful, the chemistry between Julia and Paul crackles, and Eve's recollections of earlier times are richly show more imagined. My only complaint is that the lives of the characters seem too conveniently interwoven to be true, but it is necessary to the plot. I was quite surprised as to who the murderer turned out to be, and very much sucked in to the lives of these characters. show less

Just going to break this down into bullet points...

The Good:
• The story is an interesting one.
• A lot of the writing is good, particularly from our main subject - the legendary, unapologetic Hollywood star.
• There's some humour I enjoyed.
• While there's disturbing stuff some may not like, I found it to be well written, and when it first comes up is when this book finally starts to get interesting.

The Bad:
• The tease we got with the prologue didn't pay off. When that scene finally shows up in the story, it's letdown.
• There is fatphobia to a ridiculous degree.
• I don't love long chapters, when it would have been so natural to stop in more places.
• I often found myself myself bored. It became hard to pick the book back up. show more By 200 pages in, nothing had really progressed all that much, and on the 280th page, I had started skimming.
• At about 300 pages in, our main character becomes an idiot. She also becomes a worse mom, and starts acting out of character. It's frustrating.
• There's too many drawn out details / filler information, making this 500+ page story much longer than it needs to be.
• The love interest is the absolute WORST. I'm not sure I've ever hated a book character more. He is incredibly smug, constantly smirking, manipulative, always showing up unannounced, has a huge ego, FORCES HIMSELF on the lead constantly (and can't even be in the same room with her without touching her somehow), is always grabbing and shaking her, and first KISSES HER WHILE SHE'S ASLEEP! and oh yeah, he even stalks her to another country. All this is apparently hot by the author's standards, and we're supposed to root for him with our lead. Insane.
• If The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo did rip off this book, that's obviously not cool. That being said - that book did everything better. Read that book instead.

Somewhere in between:
• The feminism in this book is, at times, incredible. Unfortunately there's also plenty of misogyny as well.
• The big mysteries and reveals could have been more interesting than they were, should have been treated as a bigger deal than they were, and just over all weren't handled very well. That being said, I didn't see them coming, and that counts for something.
• For the majority of the book, I enjoyed the spicier scenes. They're telling, and well written. However, when things start getting really serious towards the end, there's now more sex than ever, and it's just so crazy and unnecessary that that's the focus right now!
• The ending wasn't terrible, but I did not find it particularly satisfying. show less

Good not great. Fairly typical contemporary romance.

U stilu Nore, Julija je poznati pisac memoara,dolazi da pise o filmskoj zvijezdi Iv,otkriva sve skrivene istine,saznaje da je Iv njena bioloska majka i upoznaje Pola s kojim otpocinje romanticnu vezu,ali Iv odjednom neko ubije,a Julija biva prvi osumljiceni..istina se na kraju uvjek otkrije

good, but little too long.

La última gran diva de Hollywood, Eve Benedict, está dispuesta a publicar sus memorias, en las que pretende explicar todos y cada uno de los secretos mejor guardados entre la alta sociedad de Beverly Hills. Para ello contrata los servicios de Julia Summers, una reputada biógrafa de las estrellas del cine que desea preservar su vida tranquila y sin sobresaltos emocionales. Pero el hijastro de Eve, un apuesto novelista, tiene sus motivos para impedir que la biografía salga a la luz… y para asediar el corazón aparentemente cerrado de Julia.