Twice in a Blue Moon

June 7, 2019

While spending the summer before college traveling through London with her grandmother, 18-year-old Tate Jones is enjoying the solitude--until she meets the handsome Sam Brandis. Tate falls for him fast, even telling him family secrets. When her secret is exposed and Sam disappears, Tate is heartbroken. Years later, Tate is a superstar actress who has never forgotten her first love, and certainly never forgotten his betrayal. When she meets Sam again and discovers that she is starring in a film he wrote, she is conflicted. Can she ever forgive him? Unfortunately, in the present-day scenes the novel falls flat of capturing the characters and their romance, choosing to tie up loose ends quickly without much emotion or conflict. VERDICT With a then-and-now plot similar to Lauren's Love and Other Words, the writing duo's latest has a youthful voice that may be a good fit for fans of new adult romances.--Jacqueline Rammer, Lakeview Community Lib., Random Lake, WI

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019
This solid but unexceptional contemporary from Lauren (The Unhoneymooners) tries to do a few too many things at once. When Tate Butler goes on a trip to London shortly after turning 18, she meets Sam Brandis and falls instantly into a whirlwind romance so intense that she finds herself telling him her biggest secret: she’s Hollywood royalty, the “lost” daughter of heartthrob Ian Butler. She vanished from the public view at age eight, and everyone wants to know where she went. Sam almost immediately sells Tate’s secret to the tabloids and launches her into the spotlight again. Ten years after Sam’s betrayal, Tate realizes that her past isn’t as far behind her as she thinks. Stepping into her first leading role on a film set in Northern California, she’s introduced to the screenwriter: Sam. Despite his earlier betrayal, she still feels drawn to him and must decide whether to give him another chance. Sometimes awkward parallels are drawn between the love story of Sam and Tate, who are both white, and the interracial historical romance of the film they’re working on. The pacing is imperfect, but the ending satisfies. Readers inclined toward narratives of forgiveness will appreciate this story of learning to leave the past in the past. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary.

August 15, 2019
A movie star gets a rewrite for her disastrous first love story in the latest from Lauren (The Unhoneymooners, 2019, etc.). Tate Butler is on a trip to London with her grandmother when she meets Sam Brandis and his adoptive father. Luther, Sam explains, and his wife, Roberta, who is Sam's biological grandmother, raised him as their own to salvage a family scandal. Tate can relate. Her father, Ian Butler, is a movie star, and ever since her parents split up, she, her mother, and her grandmother have been hiding from the spotlight under a different last name. Just between them, Tate adds, she loves her mom, but she longs to be an actor like her dad. With that, Sam becomes Tate's confidant and her first love. But when she returns from London, her life is turned upside down--Sam has leaked her story to the press, and now she can never go back to normal. Fast-forward to a few years later, when the bulk of the story takes place, and Tate has landed the starring role in a new film--about a white woman and a black man who fall in love and fight for civil rights in the 1960s--and her famous father will be playing her father on screen. The problem is, Sam wrote the screenplay under a pen name. And by the time Tate finds this out, it's too late to back out. Stuck together on a remote set location for the duration of the shoot, the two rarely see each other through the fog of Tate's many handlers and co-stars. Tate's frosty relationship with her father also chills the air. But the story of how Sam came up with the script idea and why he sold her out so many years ago is worth the wait, and the rich family backstories add sweetness to the superficial Hollywood setting. Less snarky and broader in scope than the usual Lauren romance--a twist that offers readers something unexpected and new.

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September 15, 2019
The writing duo Christina Lauren has written another entertaining and moving romance, this time crafting a second-chance story about a couple whose intense, youthful holiday fling ends in heartbreak. When they meet in London, the attraction between Tate Jones, an aspiring actress and the incognito daughter of Hollywood's most famous leading man, and Sam Brandis, a young farmer trying to become a writer, is immediate and all-consuming. Each vacationing with a grandparent, they steal away together when they can, confiding their worries that their grandparents will likely not support their desired career paths and sharing confidences about their complicated familial situations. The strong bond they form is why Tate feels such acute devastation when Sam abruptly disappears without warning, leaving her feeling betrayed on multiple levels. Fourteen years later, the realization of their career aspirations places Tate and Sam on the same movie set. They must navigate their complicated past and maintain a manageable professional relationship and at the same time determine how to deal with a connection that remains strong despite their cataclysmic separation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)