Riverstar by Tess Thompson – a Review

Links to order Riverstar: Amazon / Kobo

Description:
After ending an affair with a married movie producer, feisty Hollywood makeup artist Bella Webber finds herself back in the quaint Oregon town of River Valley, the location of a famous director’s latest film. Despite trying to distract herself with work, Bella is unnerved by the proximity of Benjamin Fleck – a man who once so expertly made love to her she’d temporarily forgotten everything painful about her life. But now Ben sees her as nothing more than a heartbreak waiting to happen.

When an actress is found murdered after she’s seen leaving the restaurant Riversong with Ben, he is accused of the crime and arrested. Convinced of his innocence, the River Valley ‘gang of misfits’ band together to find the real killer, and Bella must face her biggest fear to ensure the truth is revealed.

Review:
Loved it loved it loved it 🙂

I totally couldn’t wait for the Riverstar by Tess Thompson. I did  wonder if Ben and Bella would get a story after reading their side story in RiverSong and RiverBend (Which I really, really liked) I wasn’t sure where Tess could take this story, as they had met. loved and fell apart….. Boy did she lead me on an adventure.

If you haven’t read the first two books , it’s not really a problem, but it does give you an insight into the main and the secondary characters, as we have met most of them in the first two books.

Bella is a make-up artist and has been having a long term affair with the producer (who is married), this broke up in book one and two, and in fact book two sees the new lovers fight and split apart for good (that’s in Ben’s words). Bella has family in River Valley, so she comes home to lick her wounds after telling the producer that it is FINALLY over !!

Ben is also here, after being asked by his company to start a call center station here. Things are very tense and angry between Bella and Ben, as he sees her wasting her life on a married man. He was wanting to start a life with her himself.

But they finally set aside their differences (with the help of the “misfits”) and make a go of their tentative feelings for each other. Bella is crazy for Ben, and I get the feeling Ben is madly in love with Bella already, (we find out in previous books that his fiancée was caught in bed with his best friend the day before their wedding, so Ben has MAJOR trust issues.)

So, the filming begins and Bella returns to work, we see a few new faces, including the starlet trying to revive her career, and her scarred twin sister. As Bella knows these girls a little, she decides to take them under her wing (the starlet has a drinking problem).

There are a few new characters, and they are all important to the story.

Ben and Bella do FINALLY get their act together and decide that they are meant for each other, and want to spend the rest of their lives as man and wife. But before this happens Ben is arrested for the Starlets murder !!!!!  Bella knows in her heart that Ben is innocent, but trying to tell Ben that is impossible, he decides that Bella needs to stay away from him and that he will do this on his own !!

The misfits (these were some of the characters from the previous books, they named themselves the misfits, as they all felt they didn’t belong to society, but they belonged to each other, they were each others family .)  decide to help both Bella and Ben , as they all believed that Ben didn’t murder the girl.

It does move at a very good pace, Tess leaves nothing out. It is full of emotion, and lots of Bella’s past comes to light.  I had tissues in my hand, and they were needed at several key moments in the book.  I’m hoping Tess does at least 2 more stories 🙂 But I won’t mind if she wants to write me more. LOL   Please read this book, and read the previous 2, I really can’t recommend them enough .

Reviewed by Julie B.

Copy provided by Author

Tess’s Publisher Booktrope has graciously offered one lucky member of The Reading Cafe a paperback set of all three of Tess’s books (*Riversong, Riverbend and
Caramel and Magnolias*).

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3.  Giveaway open to USA Only

4.  Contests runs from September 1, to JSeptember 5, 2013