The stakes are
high in LOVEGAME, when a movie star with a shattered past meets a man who can
either break her or make her whole. USA Today and New York Times bestselling
author, Tracy Wolff, returns with a novel full of seduction and desire. Fans of
Tiffany Reisz’ The Siren or Lauren Dane’s Laid Bare will fall in love with Ian
and Veronica, a true crime novelist and movie star, who steam up the pages in
LOVEGAME.
True
Crime novelist Ian Sharpe has spent his career writing about serial killers for
very personal reasons. For his latest exposé, he is taking on the sadistic
madman known as the Red Ribbon Strangler, and when his research leads him to
Hollywood’s most private and provocative actress, he will break every rule to
uncover her truth.
The
daughter of one of Hollywood’s golden couples, chased by paparazzi and treated
as a commodity her entire life, Veronica Romero wields her sex appeal like a
weapon. She expects Ian to be as easy to control as every other man she’s ever
known. But from the beginning, he refuses to fall into line. Mysterious and
cool, challenging and just a little bit dangerous, Ian somehow makes her feel
safe—even as he digs into the deepest secrets of her life and pushes her to the
breaking point.
As raw
ecstasy gives way to agonized truths, their dark obsession exposes secrets that
have been buried for far too long. Ian wants to tear down her walls and heal
the sensual woman underneath. But if Veronica’s learned anything, it’s that the
line between pleasure and pain is a narrow one—and when caught between them the
only thing that matters is how you play the game.
The Lovegame is a story with mystery and suspense that will
keep you guessing. I found that Tracy Wolff told a tale with shocking twists
and turns while still managing to be realistic. I loved the character of Ian
Sharpe his job as a True Crime novelist really appealed to me. I can be found
watching the true crime stories on the History Channel every night. I am completely
enthralled by that kind of stuff. Veronica is beautiful woman on the outside
but a bit broken on the inside. She wears a mask for the public, her
persona as the Hollywood starlet always
in place. No one has ever been able to penetrate her shell of flash and
glamour. Until Ian enters her perfectly orchestrated world and shatters all her
walls.
Ian sees passed her fake smile and the performance she puts
on for the world. In his business he had to learn how to get people to tell him
their deepest darkest secrets and desires. When she tries to get him under her
spell he turns the tables on her and gets her to show her secrets.
They have such an explosive chemistry between them that its
clear they are unable to deny it. The love scenes were fantastic total page
turner. Both of these characters have secrets and experience has taught them
not to trust people. But there is something about their connection that has them
thinking that taking a chance at the Lovegame just might be worth it.
RECEIVED AN ARC FROM NETGALLEY IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST
REVIEW.
I
take picture after picture, with a vintage champagne glass in my hand or my
face buried in a huge bouquet of dahlias. Toward the end, Marc has the stylist
and his assistant wrap me up in a long string of artificial belladonna since
the real stuff can cause problems if it touches the skin. Then they heap my
gloved hands with a mountain of the poisonous black berries and Marc has me
hold my hands out to the camera in a deadly macabre offering.
Again
and again Marc shoots me like that, taking pictures from every possible angle.
On his knees in front of me, looking up. From a ladder above me, looking down.
Beside me. Behind me. Across the room. Up close. Again and again he points and
clicks. Again and again, I smile and pout and make every other expression he
asks for. I even take his suggestion to tilt my head back with my mouth open
wide and hold one of the berries between my thumb and index finger as I pretend
to be about to drop it in. As I do, I close my eyes and pretend not to be
totally icked out.
When
I open them two minutes and twenty shots later, the first person I see is Ian.
He’s leaning back against one of the mirrored walls and for once his
omnipresent notebook is nowhere to be seen. Instead he’s staring straight at
me, a half-snarl on his normally calm face and his eyes burning with a mixture
of contempt and desire.
It’s
the first time I’ve seen anything but pleasant or puzzled interest from him and
it has the tiny hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Has ice skating down
my spine and a desert taking up residence in my mouth. Because, in that moment,
as our eyes lock and his turn impossibly darker, impossibly blacker, I don’t
know who he sees. Can’t tell who he wants.
Me
or her?
Actress
or murderer?
Sentient
being or a character he helped create?
It’s
just more fuel to add to the fire of my earlier doubts and in that one tense
and electric moment, it comes to me. What the cover shot should be.
What
I need it to be.
Marc
backs off a little, has his assistant come forward with a trash bag for me to
throw away the last of the berries and the gloves I’ve been wearing. As she
pauses to tie up the bag in front of me, I ask her for a couple wipes.
She
quickly returns with a box of baby wipes and I smile my thanks even as Marc
instructs me back against the mirror for what he calls “the last series of
shots.”
I
do as he instructs, but as he’s fiddling with the lighting, I turn toward the
mirror and swipe the wipe over the right half of my face.
“What
are you doing?” my makeup artist squawks as he comes racing across the room at
me.
“Trust
me, Dalton,” I tell him as I continue to scrub.
“Stop
doing that!” he orders as he grabs on to the end of the wipe and actually tries
to wrestle it away from me.
“Just
wait,” I instruct, refusing to let go no matter how hard he tugs.
“But—”
“What
are you up to, Veronica?” Marc asks. He sounds more intrigued than annoyed.
“I’ll
show you,” I tell him, pushing gently at Dalton’s hand until he finally lets go
with a whimper.
And
then, with the whole room—including Ian—watching me intently, I wipe the entire
half side of my face clean of any and all makeup. I do it carefully, making
sure that the line that runs down the center of my face is exact so that both
sides are completely symmetrical.
When
I’m done, I reach up and take off my right earring and hand it to Dalton who
still looks slightly shell-shocked. Then I step back and stare at this new
reflection of myself in the mirror.
Half
me at my most natural, half her at her most armored, it’s a devastating look.
Made even more so by the elaborate fifties makeup Dalton has me in—all red lips
and thick black liner and long, long lashes.
There
is a difference, I tell myself fiercely as I study myself. I am not her. I will
never be her, no matter what it felt like four months ago.
In
the background I’m aware of Marc cursing softly, of him snapping picture after
picture. I don’t turn around, instead continuing to give him my back so that he
gets both me and my reflection in each shot.
“Turn
around,” he breathes after he’s taken at least three dozen pictures.
Reluctantly,
I do as he requests, then follow his impatient gesture for me to move away from
the mirror. I step forward and then the camera starts again, clicking away to
get the shot from this angle as well.
At
that moment, Ian moves and I make the mistake of glancing his way. Our gazes
lock and heat slams through me at the look he’s giving me, has my eyes widening
and my lips parting on a gasp as I struggle to draw air into lungs that have
abruptly forgotten how to work.
“Fuck,”
Marc breathes from where he’s narrowing in on my face. “That’s it. That’s the
money shot.”
I
drag my eyes away from Ian, but it’s too late. For the first time in a very,
very long time, I feel vulnerable. And I hate every second of it.
New
York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Tracy Wolff collects books, English
degrees and lipsticks and has been known to forget where—and sometimes who—she
is when immersed in a great novel. At six she wrote her first short
story—something with a rainbow and a prince—and at seven she forayed into the
wonderful world of girls lit with her first Judy Blume novel. By ten she’d read
everything in the young adult and classics sections of her local bookstore, so
in desperation her mom started her on romance novels. And from the first page
of the first book, Tracy knew she’d found her life-long love. Now an English
professor at her local community college, she writes romances that run the
gamut from sweet contemporary to erotica, from paranormal to Urban Fantasy and
from young adult to new adult.
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