A very nice Cinderella heroine meets her movie star prince in Cutting Loose. Although it’s disorganized and overpopulated, it’s a pleasant enough book that reminded me of a compressed Chick Lit novel.

Trish Dawson grew up as the plump and plain one in the shadow of her beautiful sister Amber. Even now that she’s grown into a swan and not an ugly duckling, she still hides on the fringes in oversized clothing. Since she lost her job, Trish has worked for Amber, who runs a personal assistant business. She’s also writing a screenplay in her spare time.

Trish belongs to a group who call themselves the Sex and Supper Club. They get together to eat and talk about men. In Trish’s case, she has mostly listened. Trish and several of her friends are invited to a party to preview a documentary film on bondage and domination. Trish’s fashionista friend Cilla does a makeover on her, and Trisha goes to the party in dominatrix red leather, looking beautiful but still not believing she is. While Trish is at the party, she meets a masked Marquis de Sade and sparks fly. When the Marquis’s mask slips, Trish sees that he is Ty Ramsay, action star and notorious playboy. So she runs.

When Trish goes to work the next day, she finds Amber head over heels with excitement. Her personal assistant business has just landed a Really Big Client who wants Trish as the assistant. One guess as to who the client is. Another guess as to what happens.

Cutting Loose is filled with people, so much so that I could never figure out who was in the S&S Club and who were the significant others/lovers/just good friends. Characters appeared, then disappeared, then re-appeared and I was lost. I couldn’t help but think this book might have made a great Chick Lit novel had it been longer, with more time to tell the story, but it’s chock full of characters and chock full of incidents and it’s all too much for the length of the book.

I liked Trish. She is like so many women, stuck in an old image of herself. She was the plain sister, and by the time she grew out of her awkward childhood she did not believe she was attractive. She’s always lived life on the fringes of her more confident friends, and it is a treat to see her spread her wings. She is very interested in script writing and has a chance to punch up the dialogue for the movie Ty is working on. She gains quite a bit of confidence when the director and even the scriptwriter like her work and use it.

Ty is at a crossroads. He’s been the quintessential action hero whose character changes jobs and uniforms, but otherwise lives to hunt and kill the baddies. Off the set, Ty is known for being a playboy; he sells a lot of tabloids. But he is tired of playing the same old character and he’s tired of being tabloid fodder. He wants meatier scripts and he’s quit chasing girls. When he sees Trish’s script he wants to play the lead, but she is suspicious and can’t believe that he really likes it, or really cares for her.

Cutting Loose is an okay series romance, but it isn’t really memorable. I got lost in the mass of characters and, other than Trish, I can’t say I liked them very much. Still, if you like books with actors as characters, and you like Chick Lit, you may enjoy this book.