Thursday 8 December 2016

Review ~ The Monday Girl (The Girl Duet #1) by Julie Johnson


Book Description:

THE GIRL DUET: PART ONE

Katharine Firestone is a bit of a mess. 

Between an acting career that’s never quite made lift-off to stardom, a pathetic love life of online-dating-app losers, and a maxed-out balance on every one of her credit cards, things can’t get much worse. So, when she’s plucked from relative obscurity to land a lead role in Hollywood’s next big blockbuster, Kat is sure she’s finally on the right track. 

Until she meets her co-star, Grayson Dunn… and all her plans are completely derailed. 

Grayson is everything you’d expect the hottest actor alive to be — charming, disarming, and cocky as hell. As their characters slowly spiral into love on screen, Kat struggles to keep herself from falling for real. She knows handing Grayson her heart and expecting him not to break it would be the biggest mistake of her life. Yet the deeper she’s immersed in his glamorous world, the more blurred the boundaries between scripted affection and sincere passion become… and the harder it is to deny that their on-camera chemistry has crescendoed into a behind-the-scenes love affair…

What happens when you fall for someone who’s guaranteed to shatter you into pieces? Do you walk away? Or do you let him break you because, even broken, there’s simply no way you can’t stay?


THE MONDAY GIRL is a messy contemporary romance about a mixed up girl who falls for the wrong boy. It is the first part of a duet. The second installment, THE SOMEDAY GIRL, will be released a few weeks later, in early 2017. Each installment is approximately 85,000 words. Recommended for readers ages 17+ due to strong language, sexual situations, drug use, and other mature elements.

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Our Review:

Reviewed by Donna ~ 4.5 stars 


“I suppose that’s the thing about being the fly in a web. You don’t know you’re caught until it’s far, far too late.”


Damn, is it February 1st yet? I don’t know why I put myself through duets or trilogies or series…oh yes, I do know…because I love them. I love that they get me so riled that I feel the need to message anyone who will listen and say GIVE ME THE NEXT BOOK! As I was working my way through the nineties percent mark I was dreading it, I knew that the ending was going to be killer, I knew that I didn’t want to leave my little Firestarter alone and now damn, there she is suspended in time until February 1st…I need to carry on Julie Johnson!!!


“Thing about shadows is…they can’t exist without light around them. So, the way I see it, you’ve got a choice about what you focus on. You want to see the world as gloom and doom, that’s your prerogative. Me? I stay in the sunshine, baby.”


Katharine Firestone is a woman I wanted to hug pagely…is that a word? Well, if not I just invented it…every page I wanted to give her a hug even though she wasn’t a hugger, this girl needs hugs. Starved of affection from her mother, her only parent and only seen as a meal ticket, Kat has deep rooted issues all at the hands of a mother I wanted murder. Kat has low self-esteem, feels unlovable, unwanted and just a general waste of oxygen, but this girl has a huge heart and a huge personality if you can just get past her brash, offensive exterior which is her defence mechanism.


“When you’ve spent your whole life not being good enough, it takes time to let yourself believe that you finally are. Self-worth isn’t a switch that flips inside you. It’s a daily struggle not to sabotage your own success. Not to cave into the voices inside your head that whisper you’re not good enough, or you’ll fuck things up, or that someone else could do things better than you.”


Getting out from under her mother’s feet, Kat takes herself off to make it in the big wide world of acting. Living in a dingy apartment and slinging drinks at a nightclub is much more welcoming than staying at home living with her agent/mother. Going to another dead-end audition that her mother has arranged is the last thing on her mind, but she makes it with her hangover and attitude firmly in place, while the role she is auditioning for is a waste of time, the audition may not be a total waste of effort, Kat’s life is about to change.


“Success is a quarter timing, a quarter talent, a bit of fate, and a hell of a lot of dumb luck.”


Plucked from obscurity to star in a Hollywood blockbuster Kat’s life is running at warp speed. Starring alongside Hollywood’s hottest, heart throb actor, gives her hives and she soon finds herself trying to separate what is real and what is fiction. Grayson is a playboy, a commitment-phobe and a typical Hollywood A Lister with parties and alcohol the top of his priority list, but underneath the playboy façade I secretly thought he wanted the opposite, he was just to chicken shit to embrace it.

So, what happens when you love someone that doesn’t have the propensity to love back? What happens when you are loved by someone you don’t deserve? You get this duet. I loved the angst, I loved the film set location, I loved the too and fro. I loved the bristling undercurrents of flirtation, fascination, I loved Kat, I loved the supporting characters, I loved the dialogue, the banter. I could see it coming a mile off, but it’s delivery was perfect, I’m not a fan of miscommunication but in this case, it added to that delicious angst and it worked.


“You think you can change a guy, that he’ll be different with you, that you’ll finally be the one to tame him… and before you know it, you’re alone in your underwear at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, crying to Adele songs, eating ice cream straight from the gallon, and wondering what the hell is the matter with you that you fell for such a goddamned man-child, after he explicitly warned you not to.”


Julie Johnson delivers a story that embraces a fairy tale romance without the fairy tale, a broken woman who desperately wants to be loved that falls for the wrong man. A woman whose knight in shining in armour is still hiding behind his suit. A raw, honest, emotional account of a woman who is indescribably lost until she is found, but should she have stayed hidden? I highlighted a tonne in this book, underneath the light-hearted dialogue, at times, Julie Johnson delivered the deep and meaningfuls which gave rise to some stunning quotes. I couldn’t put this book down, I was captivated by Kat from first to last page, I experienced her highs and lows and loved every minute of it. I need more, I need to know what happens, I have questions I want answered…I want February 1st to come post haste!!


“I am not the Juliet to his Romeo. I am not the lodestar around which he orbits. I am not the trade wind by which he sets the course of his sails. I am not essential or exceptional…I was his Monday girl. Shitty, really, since he was my whole damn week.”

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