Famous by Jenny Holiday – a Review

Description:
Everyone knows her face. He knows her heart.

Emerson Quinn is famous. Girls want to be her. Boys want to date her. Each record outsells the last. All that remains is to continue transitioning her brand from its teenage fan base to a more mature, diverse audience. So she’s under strict orders to play nice with her army of assigned co-songwriters and to knock off the serial dating that keeps landing her in the tabloids. If she follows instructions, she can look forward to an indefinite run at the top of the celebrity ecosystem. There’s only one problem with this plan: Emerson is miserable.

So she runs away, impulsively fleeing her L.A. life and heading for a small Iowa college town where a guy she once knew lives. He’s the only person in the world she can think of who might be enough of a nerd to not know about Emerson Quinn the brand. Who might be willing to provide a haven where she can lay low and write her new album by herself, on her own terms.

Art history professor Evan Winslow knows a thing or two about leaving your past behind. He’s worked hard to establish himself far from the spotlight of his infamous father. He’s up for tenure soon, which will mean job security for life. All he has to do to lock down his hard-won, blessedly quiet existence is keep his head down.

Too bad the most famous pop star in the world—who also happens to be his long-lost muse—has just shown up on his doorstep.

Review:

When Evan and Emmy first meet, he’s running away from attention and she’s running toward it. Seven years later, their paths reconvene in the “straight lines and right angles” of Iowa, “No twists and turns. Nothing and no one lurking unexpectedly behind a bend in the road. No blind spots.” Will such luxury of independence serve Emmy’s song-producing needs? And what of Evan’s newly-invaded heart, because Emmy whirls in and intensifies all his repressed emotions. Jenny Holiday is “Famous“, *wink, wink* for introducing wonderful characters whose lives she upends only to make them more life-affirming. Gotta love an author like this!

Emmy made her dreams come true, she’s a massive star, but when the music industry begins churning her into a machine, she tries to escape the “Famous” lifestyle she ambitiously created. Evan wishes he could resume his creativity that was deprived him by the sins of his father. Although struggling within an artistic spectrum, Evan and Emmy are more in tune than not. Surprisingly, and selflessly, Evan and Emmy don’t despair over their plights; seeking only to support each other’s goals. Their talents are reenergized in each other’s stasis.

When things turn romantic, as they’re clearly headed (I know I wanted it!), uncertainty overrides emotion. In an effort to achieve her most sought after independence, Emmy’s decreed a moratorium on dating. Evan, honorable dude that he is, abides by her wishes…and battles his burgeoning desires. This may, or may not, make them irritable. But it only enhances their communication. Jenny Holiday moonlights as a part-time therapist, I’m sure. 😉

“But, amazingly, the odd stiffness between them wasn’t enough to extinguish the attraction between them.”

Internal chaos turns innocuous Iowa into a catalyst for two uneasy souls. “The sense that even though everything was orderly and tidy, this was also, paradoxically, a place where anything could happen.” Famous is a beautiful love story that launches a watershed moment to epic proportions. Emmy and Evan weren’t unhappy, but complacent and ultimately compromising their potential. Shared sensibility and compassion inspired them to ask for more. Emmy and Evan surmounted a mountain of more.

On a fun note, I had likened Emmy and Evan to Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel from Safe Haven. But when Emmy was going on about how college girls must be dying to get into Evan’s class, I immediately thought of Indiana Jones and the student with her eyelids declaring devotion. Picture whomever you’d like, maybe even Taylor Swift? ;D. Just know that you’re in for some steamy scenes. Yeah, so not complaining.

Reviewed by Carmen

Copy supplied for review

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