Review: In Development

In Development by Rachel Spangler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars 

Finished on March 11, 2021

Favorite Scene/Quote: "I need you to understand that the minute you let someone else tell you who you are or how you feel is the minute you start to lose the best parts of yourself."

This book is an amazing story of fauxmance to romance in the lives of the rich and famous. I needed a couple chapters to really get into the story but once I did, I was hooked.

    

Cobie is an actress best known for her teenage romance movie roles. When she wants to work on something edgier and more meaningful to her, she has to work with Lila. Lila is a popstar with the intent of ruling the world by constantly keeping up with her fanbase as they age and giving them songs to reflect their life. The two are led into a fauxmance by their managers with the intent of eventually staging a break up. The two have explosive chemistry with each other but they need to focus on their careers. What’s the worst that can happen?

I really loved Cobie. I love the idea of an actress getting tired of constantly playing the same roles and wanting to switch it up and challenge themselves more. She was a sweet girl-next-door character and it was nice to watch her evolve from that without necessarily losing what made her true to herself. Lila took me a while longer to warm up to, but I did. The best thing this book did for me was give me a reason why a character I didn’t like was acting the way they were. When they showed Lila’s reason, I was onboard.

The two characters read with such chemistry that it was amazing. Whether they were fighting or not the two constantly had a spark. The way they spoke to each other felt real and I was invested in the outcomes of their discussions. Their attraction was undeniable and fiery and bound to explode.

I quite liked the secondary characters in the story as well. They worked well to help flesh out the main characters. I especially like Talia and Addie and I would love to read a book around either of them. The managers were a nice touch and at times even had paragraphs about how they were responding to the situation. I specifically enjoyed those points-of-view because it worked as a way to show what the media was thinking about the relationship while also showing the relationships the managers had with two people they had been working with since they were teens.

There is drama abound in this story and I loved most of it. I don’t like drama at its face value, but this drama was well-written and established in the story. It didn’t come out nowhere and instead was handled well. I especially love the discussions that were had between the characters after the breakup. The talks where Cobie admits that what she was doing wasn’t different than what Lila was doing but also the talk where Talia helps her realize that she couldn’t have kept giving her trust to Lila without getting any trust back.

I would recommend this book as it’s a compelling read with interesting characters.