Standalone Sunday is a feature created by Megan@bookslayereads where each Sunday a standalone book (not part of a series) that I loved or would recommend will be featured!
I love that meme as it takes little time to do (I’m always running like the real busy bee I am) AND I get to promote a book I really loved. This is the perfect idea for me!
If you want to play, feel free but don’t forget to tag Megan’s blog.
Something funny and sassy for this Standalone Sunday. Alessandra Torre can write very hot and naughty or playful or intriguing… With Hollywood Dirt she gave us a sassy story with an incredible female character born and raised as a Southern Belle even if she’s poor. If you’re looking for something easy to read, well written with banter flying by, this could be your read. Cherry on top: it will be a movie!
Happy reading 😀
5 « southern» stars
”Southern women are unique; there is no disputing that. We are women born of conflict, our pasts littered with battles and chaos, self-preservation, and protection. We’ve run plantations during war, served Union soldiers tea before watching them burn our home, hidden slaves from prosecution, and endured centuries of watching and learning from our men’s mistakes.” … “We have held these states together, held our dignity and graciousness, held our head high when it was smeared with blood and soot. We are strong. We are Southern. We have secrets and lives you will never imagine”.
These are only words but they made me fall in love with the book and I never recovered. This introduction sets the tone and the pace of the story, it IS Hollywood Dirt.
Words are powerful when used properly and I could feel the bite of mosquitoes, die in the heat of the day, see Summer cottage in the cotton field, admire the majestic plantations and taste Summer’s sweet tea. With just words, Alessandra Torre made me feel this town, this community, this story deep in my bones.
Summer is a beautiful young woman living with her mother on the outskirts of a big plantation in her care in Quincy, Georgia. Home to 67 Coca-Cola millionaires, Quincy’s community is very conservative and far from flashy. Never show your wealth, be gracious. ”Keep your secrets close and your enemies closer.”
Summer has been the town outcast for three years now. What happened to make her a pariah in that community where appearances are of the utmost importance?
When a stranger knocks at the door, asking if she is the owner of the big plantation, she could never know how her world would change. The stranger is a location scout and needs to procure spots for the filming of the latest creation of the most famous and hot actor in Hollywood, Cole Masten. Summer knows the inner working of this little town and is aware an outsider, a stranger could never rent any location for filming. As she needs money to leave town and have a new beginning, she offers to help Ben (the scout) to find the proper location and earn the much needed cash in the process.
When Cole Masten, in the middle of a very pubic divorce comes in Quincy and meets Summer for the first time, he gives her his megawatt Hollywood smile and… will be thrown out of Summer’s home. Condescending with no proper manners in Summer’s eyes, she’ll teach the hotshot actor some etiquette.
”Get out. I mean it. Get out, or I swear to God I’ll shoot you.” … “She means it. She has guns in her coat closet.”
From that moment on, Cole Masten wants Summer to play Ida, the female lead, a Coca-Cola secretary with attitude. Summer will agree as she desperately needs money but they’ll fight constantly, like a long and very hot foreplay.
I loved reading about the town, the community. I loved Summer’s attitude. She is a strong girl with an iron backbone and she’ll tame the Hollywood Golden Boy. I loved their battles, their foreplay. I loved Cole’s evolution from superficial jackass, used to have everyone at his beck and call, into a “real” man, enjoying simple pleasures, not afraid to get wrinkles in the sun. I loved Cocky, I loved Summer’s original and unexpected welcoming gift. I loved Brad De Luca, the sexy and commanding attorney (I’ve just bought “Blindfolded Innocence”), I loved … everything.
I inhaled this book like a heady perfume, drunk on its words only.
I’m adding Alessandra Torre to my « authors you’re following » right now. I already loved “Black Lies”, could no longer tell up from down as the author played such mind games but Hollywood Dirt really is another masterpiece. I’m amazed Alessandra Torre can create such different books and make them all something brilliant and unique.
So I haven’t heard of this book, but I have heard of this author… and a lot of people I know love her books! I may have to try some of her work one day! Thank you so much for the standalone recommendation 🙂
I hope you’ll get to read it one day Susan!
Sophie, love today’s feature!!! Not only is Hollywood Dirt a perfect book for a Standalone Sunday – I adored it – it also got me going to post my very first Standalone Sunday post. Yay!!! So thank you.
Glad you enjoyed this Corina ;-)))