Book Review: Cover Girl by Nic Tatano

 Thank you to Harper Impulse and Netgalley for gifting me this book. I was looking forward to reading Cover Girl as it is the second book I have read by Nic Tatano. The first book ‘Twitter Girl’ was rated in my top ten reads of 2015, which you can read HERE So I had high hopes for this new book.

Description:

Powerhouse romance editor Keira Madison is known as “Cover Girl” – because she’s come up with the concepts for the covers of the best selling novels in history. But right now, she’s desperate to replace her best selling author.

Wannabe author Alex Bauer has given up hope of ever selling his military thriller, so he takes a shot at writing a romance and sends it to super agent Bella Farentino. She’s blown away by the book, but more shocked to find out the author is a man. So she decides it’s best to keep it a secret when pitching the novel – what does a man know about romance after all?

When Keira buys the book, Alex needs a cover story to hide the fact he’s the real author. So he invents a fictional cousin who’s an agoraphobe; too shy to ever leave the house. He agrees to work as “her” intermediary during the editing process while getting a friend to “play” the author on the phone.

One major problem. He falls hard for Keira, a spunky redhead who is a dead ringer for the heroine in the book. And she’s smitten with him, as he’s a clone of the novel’s romantic hero, a fictional Mister Right come to life.

You see where this is going.

As the release date for the book gets closer, their relationship grows stronger while the tale of the fictional author goes over the top. At some point Alex will have to come clean that he’s the real author of the book but worries he’ll risk losing Keira because she won’t be able to trust him.

It’s “Tootsie” meets the publishing world… without anyone getting dressed up in drag.

Published September 3rd 2015 by HarperImpulse

My Thoughts:

As I mentioned I had high hopes for this book, due to the last one. I did enjoy Cover Girl, but not quite as much as Twitter Girl. The ‘spunky redhead’ Keira is not quite as spunky as the redhead in Twitter Girl. I did like her, especially because she is written as a real woman i.e she likes her food, she isn’t ‘perfect’, and when times go bad…. she turns to chocolate!! (I can relate to that part for sure)

“Fine, I’ll have chocolate for dinner”.

The story was cute, if a little predictable. It has great characters who make up a love square! The two main characters Keira and Alex (the publisher and the Author) fall for each other, but both are seeing other people. The story revolves around what happens with them and includes a couple of outer characters, who are also really interesting too.

I liked to hear about the publishing side of things in this story, as I don’t know a lot about publishing, editing etc. So it was interesting to hear about it as part of a good read. The novel was written almost like a story within a story, it was cleverly written to give the reader a insight into a writers mind and a publishers mind. But  whilst doing so was still an easy read. Obviously the Author has experience of both. 

The characters used language that was total bookish talk too, Keira says:

“…you should consider me a sold out best seller. Currently unavailable”. 

I enjoyed this book, it is an easy reading story with cute parts, funny parts, parts where you are screaming ‘No, don’t do that’ and parts when you are saying ‘do it do it’!!  😉

I did find it a little odd that the publishers didn’t want its readers to know that the Author was a man. (because readers are less likely to read romance novels written by men). The gender of the Author makes no difference to me, I consider the cover, the description and the reviews, so it did make me wonder if this is true or if it were just added for the story effect? Would this make a difference to you? Let me know.

Have you read any books by Nic Tatano, can you recommend any others and what did you think of Cover Girl? Do you want to read it? Does it make a difference to you if the Author is male or female? 

 

Links:

GOODREADS.

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.CO.UK

Twitter.com/NicTatano