Read of the Week: ‘Behind the Scenes’ by Dahlia Adler

High school senior Ally Duncan’s best friend may be the Vanessa Park – star of TV’s hottest new teen drama – but Ally’s not interested in following in her BFF’s Hollywood footsteps. In fact, the only thing Ally’s ever really wanted is to go to Columbia and study abroad in Paris. But when her father’s mounting medical bills threaten to stop her dream in its tracks, Ally nabs a position as Van’s on-set assistant to get the cash she needs.

Spending the extra time with Van turns out to be fun, and getting to know her sexy co-star Liam is an added bonus. But when the actors’ publicist arranges for Van and Liam to “date” for the tabloids just after he and Ally share their first kiss, Ally will have to decide exactly what role she’s capable of playing in their world of make believe. If she can’t play by Hollywood’s rules, she may lose her best friend, her dream future, and her first shot at love.

I’m really loving all these movie star/rock star novels about ordinary girls who fall in love with some pretty un-ordinary boys. As entertaining as Behind the Scenes turned out to be, though, for the most part, it just didn’t cut it for me. But make no mistake, I don’t feel indifferent about this book at all, and I actually loved it, big time.

First and foremost, I don’t know what it is, but I had this thing against Liam, who plays opposite of Ally, and is not only one of the newest, biggest teen heartthrobs, but is also in love with our leading gal. He was original and surprisingly real (for the most part) while living in la-la land, but there was something about him that was just missing for me. Between him and Nate, I had this really strong feeling that Nate would end up winning over Ally, and when things took a rather unexpected turn, it just didn’t add up for me. It was almost like the boys had switched characters at the last minute, and as much as I wanted to feel like Liam was genuine, there were too many moments, including the situation with Ally’s best friend, Vanessa, that I just wasn’t comfortable with. I also had a problem with the way Vanessa reacted to certain things that pissed me off so much. As a best friend there were some things she automatically should have known/understood, and the fact that the whole fake relationship blew up in her face and that she was surprised that her best friend wasn’t all too alright with her dating her real-life boyfriend was just beyond me. Some things just don’t make sense, but in a way, this sort of made the characters a bit more real as everyone was unreasonably angry, and isn’t everyone always unreasonably angry? Behind the Scenes also managed to end things on the most optimistic note, which is great, but everything just happened to miraculously get wrapped up in a nice big red bow which makes no sense to me because considering the circumstances, being realistic, I was expecting at least one thing to go wrong.

I really liked the relationship between Ally and her dad, and how much it was incorporated into the story. I felt like it was pivotal to the plot and never once thought that it wan’t given enough attention. As a whole, the story worked really well and kept me captivated for a majority of the novel.

Behind the Scenes is a beautiful story about an average girl with extraordinary friends who has yet to realize that she, just like everyone else in this big bold world, is anything but ordinary.

Rating: 8/10