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Her Latest Supporting Role by Cynthia Ashworth

When you can’t make it as an actress in New York, what’s the next best thing? Work in advertising! Jill Barber takes on a job at a large ad agency while working to finish her degree at New York University. After failing her final exam and then refusing to sleep with her professor in order to pass, she is forced to attend summer school. Jill doesn’t think it’s so bad once she finds out her instructor is the gorgeous young novelist Jonathan Wunder. The drama begins once Jill enters a possible relationship with Wunder, all while studying to pass her class, keep her job when layoffs threaten the ad company, and fight off advances from another co-worker.
I’m sad to say I really didn’t enjoy Her Latest Supporting Role, the debut novel from Cynthia Ashworth. I had a hard time developing any sort of a connection with the main character, and felt at times the story was moving along too fast for me to understand why certain scenes were happening. The supporting characters didn’t motivate me at all, and I sometimes wondered what the point of the best friend was. One thing that really displeased me was about halfway through, the story turned to all emails. Pages and pages of emails between the characters, and once that happened, I was totally out of it. Some important realizations were happening to the main character, but instead of feeling any of it or realizing those same points alongside Jill, I was just being told about them in a short email. I was disappointed with this rom com debut, and I hope Ashworth’s future writing will be more inspiring.
Rating: 2/5

In My Mailbox: Week of October 17

In My Mailbox: Week of October 17th

Title: Four Thousand Miles
Author: Jesi Lea Ryan
Received: From Jesi Lea Ryan
Synopsis: When Natalie Spencer loses both her career and marriage in the same morning, the emotional shock sends her on a spontaneous journey to England. There, she is nearly mugged in a Tube station, but an introverted songwriter named Gavin Ashby scares off her attackers. Recognizing Natalie’s fragile state, Gavin offers help and invites her to recuperate from her trauma at his country home.

As she adjusts to her new role and surroundings, Natalie finds healing by helping others. Gavin and his family begin to accept Natalie into their hearts, leading her to a choice…abandon her old life in the States and trust in a new chance at love, or flee once again?

Title: Her Latest Supporting Role
Author: Cynthia Ashworth
Received: From Cynthia Ashworth
Synopsis: Jill Barber is a failed former actress and almost-MFA…or so she thinks. A botched exam and her reluctance to submit to a lecherous lecturer’s proposal—sleep with him for a passing grade—land her in summer school, taking a class taught by hot young novelist Jonathan Wunder.

Jill’s nights are spent working to finish her degree, her days at a large Madison Avenue ad agency trying desperately to hang onto its largest account. Tellco Toys’ business is about to walk out the door, and Constable, the agency’s mercurial President, is making everyone’s life miserable: Jill’s bosses, the Über-Producers Sandi and Nick; Petra and Robin (a hip and friendly creative team with a knack for giving Jill the wrong advice); and client-service guy Graham, who has taken quite a shine to Jill. And against her better judgment, she soon finds herself in an ambiguous romantic relationship with her instructor, while trying to deflect the attentions of her straight-laced and smitten co-worker without hurting her budding career.

HER LATEST SUPPORTING ROLE is a romantic comedy set in the funny and frantic world of New York advertising. Jill’s romantic missteps—as she maneuvers between her enigmatic instructor and a charming but hapless colleague—and the agency’s increasingly desperate attempts to save the big account (and everyone’s jobs) are parallel stories that drive toward a surprising climax.

Title: Falling Home
Author: Karen White
Received: From Joy Strazza with Joan Schulhafer Publishing & Media Consulting
Synopsis: Falling Home is a coming home story about forgiveness and acceptance, and of finding love in the most unexpected of places. Home is where the heart is, but Cassie Madison prefers to think of it as a place where one is born, then outgrows, along with skinned knees and childhood dreams. A humiliated Cassie left Walton, Georgia for Manhattan fifteen years before, vowing never to return.
And then her sister calls. Their father is dying and wants Cassie to come back home. When Cassie’s father dies, saddling her with the family’s antebellum home and letters hinting of an unknown sibling, Cassie finds herself sinking into the red Georgia clay like quicksand. Reluctantly, Cassie is pulled into the lives of her sister and family, and that of Sam Parker, the town doctor.
When tragedy strikes, Cassie is led to discover that home is a place that lives in one’s heart, waiting with open arms to be rediscovered.