Book Title: ShutterGirl
Author: CD Reiss
Series: Standalone
Release Date: May 20th, 2015
Genres: Contemporary Romance
ONE movie star on the cusp of greatness
ONE broken girl who touched him
TEN years to forget her
A MILLION stories in Hollywood
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I am not hurt.
I don’t need a second chance with him, or a life I thought I had.
While he was out forgetting me to become a movie star, I was building a career out of nothing. A career as a paparazzi, but a career. For a foster kid who bounced around every home in Los Angeles, that wasn’t easy.
This camera is all I have.
He’s nothing to me. Every time I take his picture and sell it, I remind myself that I did it all without him or his approval, his cinnamon smell or his clear green eyes. He lights up the screen like a celestial body, but he’s nothing but a paycheck to me.
He can throw my camera off a balcony, and nothing has to change. We can stay king and queen of the same city, and different worlds.
Except this is Hollywood, and here, anything can happen.
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"She was a vortex. I’d avoided getting swallowed up in her once, and now, more than ever, I needed to avoid it again."
Having read and loving her Songs of Submission series, CD Reiss certainly doesn't come by as a foreign name to me in the erotica genre. Jonathan Drazen still remains as one of my top favorite dominant alpha-male and she never disappoints with her sensual reads that are intense yet emotional. While ShutterGirl is a departure from her usual writings and ventures into the contemporary territory, naturally I was a little apprehensive but slowly I found that fear dissipating as I allowed myself to be hypnotised by CD Reiss's poetic writing.
ShutterGirl is a contemporary romance story set in the glitz and glamorous world of Hollywood. Laine Cartwright is a paparazzi who's at the top of the pack, armed with a camera as her weapon of choice. Coming from a rough childhood and being passed from one foster house to another, all she's ever known is to survive. Los Angeles is her battleground and along with her step-brother, they lived on the thrill of chasing the juiciest stories around.
Michael Greydon is America's golden boy and hailing from a family of celebrities, he's a Hollywood-material actor who is on-track with the stardom path set out for him. Always living by the set of rules and staying out of trouble, he tries to avoid being in the center of attention...until one fateful night.
A night where the red velvet ropes drop and the paparazzi behind the camera shows her face, Laine and Michael reunites with each other after being revealed that they were high-school mates but circumstances had left them separated with a lasting impact. Two individuals from polar opposites background and even after ten years later, they both still find themselves at the extreme ends of this glamorous industry. But they can't deny the attraction...even when it comes at the cost of fame.
There were a number of things I enjoyed about this read and the main highlight for me is being CD Reiss's writing. Now I've only read her SoS series and while her scorching intense scenes took the spotlight for me from that series, I've never really given much emphasis on her writing. With Shuttergirl instead, I started to notice her elegant writing prose and had me highlighting like crazy across the read. Right down to the nitty gritty deets of the Hollywood scene itself, I found myself latching onto these rich details that made me feel like I was walking down the streets of L.A. itself.
The plot itself was also quite a refreshing one for me being a star-crossed lovers prose done with a different twist. It's also a second-chance romance aside having the "forbidden love" aspect with Laine & Michael being on the opposite ends of the vicious food chain that is the Hollywood industry. A paparazzi being romantically linked to renowned actor, that's just calling for a PR disaster. It wasn't insta-love between these two which I appreciated because the author really took the time to lay out a strong foundation for both characters as she merges their past and present quite brilliantly that eventually builds into a really solid story for me.
It didn't bother me that for a majority portion of the book, both MCs weren't officially a couple. Also for those of you expecting a handful of steamy scenes like this author usually brings with her erotica genre, consider yourself warned. You won't be getting any dominant Drazen steamy-filled scenes here but rest assured, the undercurrent of sexual tension between these two was undeniable. Personally that appealed to me because it got me all antsy and dying for more while I continuously root for this couple.
However, it did fall short for me when I felt the story dragged at certain places. Sometimes it also felt like some scenes were leading up to something great but it didn't just quite hit the mark. The last 20% of the read also went into another direction that came off a little rushed for me and while I thought the ending was quite swoon-worthy, I was really hoping for a proper epilogue for these two.
Overall Shuttergirl took me by surprise seeing how this is different from CD Reiss's usual work. Her alluring writing took the spotlight and became much more prominent here, not to mention it really fleshed out the character depth which I highly enjoyed. The lack of smut didn't even faze me because I was just invested with these characters and their story. I'm definitely looking forward to CD Reiss writing more contemporary fiction from now on because she can certainly bag this genre alongside her erotica ones.
ShutterGirl is a standalone contemporary romance read.
ARC kindly provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CD Reiss is a USA Today and Amazon bestseller. She still has to chop wood and carry water, which was buried in the fine print. Her lawyer is working it out with God but in the meantime, if you call and she doesn’t pick up, she’s at the well, hauling buckets.
Born in New York City, she moved to Hollywood, California to get her master’s degree in screenwriting from USC. In case you want to know, that went nowhere, but it did embed TV story structure in her head well enough for her to take a big risk on a TV series structured erotic series called Songs of Submission. It’s about a kinky billionaire hung up on his ex-wife, an ingenue singer with a wisecracking mouth; art, music and sin in the city of Los Angeles.
Critics have dubbed the books “poetic,” “literary,” and “hauntingly atmospheric,” which is flattering enough for her to put it in a bio, but embarrassing enough for her not to tell her husband, or he might think she’s some sort of braggart who’s too good to give the toilets a once-over every couple of weeks or chop a cord of wood.
If you meet her in person, you should call her Christine.
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