film/tv making

A
The True Love Experiment

With their latest standalone romcom, The True Love Experiment, perennial dynamic duo Christina Lauren prove, once again, they’re soaring among the best business partnerships ever. Batman and Robin. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. Lennon and McCartney. Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Starbucks an ...

B-
Funny Guy

Sam can’t escape the smash hit “Lost Boy” because, well, he is the lost boy. His pop-singer ex immortalized him in a song about his childish ways, and now his comedy career is on the line. At least he still has Bree, his best friend and confidante. Bree has always been there for Sam, but ...

A-
Full Exposure

Full Exposure takes us into the heart of Mardi Gras with all of its glitter and pageantry. Two lovers find romance unexpectedly, but is what they have real enough to last? Josie Parks and Spencer Pham meet in a New Orleans urgent care center and strike up a banter-filled conversation after she wh ...

A-
Home Grown Talent

Joanna Chambers and Sally Malcolm earned a DIK from me for their first collaboration, Total Creative Control, a funny, sexy grumpy/sunshine romance set in the world of television production. Now they’re back with its sequel, Home Grown Talent, an opposites-attract romance between a cinnamon roll a ...

A
Reel

Reel is the first in Kennedy Ryan’s Hollywood Renaissance series featuring Black creatives. Director Canon Holt’s six-month search for the woman to star in his biopic of a forgotten Black musical legend comes to an end when he sees Neevah Saint take the stage as a Broadway understudy. He doesn ...

A-
How to Fake it in Hollywood

How to Fake It in Hollywood is an age-gap, fake-relationship contemporary romance début that delivers a Real Deal Romance packed into a slightly uneven story.   Grey Books (real name Emily) is a child actor-turned-teen TV star (think One Tree Hill) of moderate fame. At twenty-seven, after almo ...

B+
Birds of California

Birds of California is one of the better post-#MeToo showbiz-kids –grow-up-in-Hollywood novels.  Warm and inviting,with engaging characters who are enjoyable, it gets slightly dinged for pacing issues. Fiona St. James was once the child star on the family dramedy The Birds of California, which ...

A-
Weather Girl

Weather Girl, I can’t wait to see you – Russell to Ari Weather Girl is an incredibly charming romance.  Warm and sweet, it’s also honest about what depression can do to a person and the rigors and difficulties of single parenthood, mean bosses and difficult parents. Ari Abrams is a cheery ...

B+
Just for the Holidays

Adriana Herrera’s Sambrano Studios series – about a family-run movie business – adds a charming chapter with Just for the Holidays, a Christmas-themed romance with a lot of wonderful tension and romantic warmth. Perla Sambrano is a casting director trying to coax her ex into taking a part i ...

A-
Total Creative Control

Two of my favourite authors teaming up to write a grumpy/sunshine “angsty rom-com” ?  YES, PLEASE – sign me up!  Total Creative Control is a captivating read and I blew through it two sittings. Featuring two complex, superbly characterised protagonists, and a small but equally well-written s ...