On Pop Stars: A Review of From This Moment On by Bella Andre

I have to apologize, because I'm writing this review two full days after actually finishing the book. I usually try really hard review immediately. The trouble is, in my sugar high induced by coffee and and cherry lollipops and more coffee, I forgot that I finished this book.

Forgettable is not an attractive quality in a book.

This is installment two of the grand Sullivan saga, and it features Marcus, the oldest Sullivan brother. The vineyard owner. But that's really not important to the story. What is important, is that he gets cheated on, goes out looking for some revenge/healing/forget you sex, and ends up taking home Nicola. He doesn't realize that Nicola is actually Nico, a famous pop star with a false reputation as a party girl. The two like each others' bodies and decide to keep hooking up while Nicola is in town shooting videos and suffering in her fame.

Positive Comments

This would be a good book for a plane ride or a car trip somewhere, because you can finish the whole thing in a couple of hours and not be too bored. It's an easy, comfortable read. It's predictable, and it doesn't tax your brain.

The delightful screwiness of the Sullivan siblings, with their interesting jobs and their personalities that exactly match those jobs...has kind of grown on me. It's a little like the Sims, where characters have simple traits and career goals to match. I'm brave so...I'll be a firefighter! I'm nice, quiet, and bookish...librarian! Good leader...businessman! Creative...photographer! Yeah, I don't know, it's cheesy, but it's the good kind of cheesy.

Andre seems to be good at love scenes. And not just the sex itself, but the lead up and the afterglow--the entire thing is perfect and flawless. She knows how to create tenderness, lust, desperation, morning after awkwardness, all that stuff that happens when real people have real sex. And she makes it enjoyable. That's not an easy task for a writer.

Critical Comments

You can probably tell by my description that I found the plot hokey. I'm not a fan of this idea--"Let's have hot sex, but NOT get emotionally involved, and then go our separate ways." It's too predictable of a trope for my taste. I don't feel like their are a lot of twists left to throw into it so that it becomes interesting. And it's not interesting in this book, not even a little.

Nicola's character arc involves figuring out how to balance the real, soft version of herself with the sexy popstar everyone loves. Yeah...I don't like pop music. It seems to me like there's a lot of attention whoring that you have to do to make it in that industry, which is what Nico has fallen into, but she pities herself about it. I can't sympathize with that. You make choices in any career and if you choose to sell out by allowing yourself to be dressed in nothing but glitter and bubble wrap, the fall out from that is on your head. I didn't care at all for character development, because I couldn't relate to her and I felt like she created all of the problems she was so frustrated with.

I honestly can't even remember much about Marcus and his emotional journey. I think it involved moving on from his ex-not-fiance, and believing in true love and happiness again. I know there was sex and spanking and things ended well. That's about it.

Recommendation

I'm not going to warn you off of it. It's not overtly awful. It's just very forgettable. Very predictable. There was no substance and no stakes. It's a mediocre contemporary romance. 2.5 stars.

Buy from Amazon: From This Moment On: The Sullivans, Book 2