Overall Grade: C
Y’all…I didn’t get it. If you’ve read my reviews, you know I give high scores on my books because 1) I’m careful who I read. Once I find an author I love, I keep reading them. There’s a reason for loving them. And 2) I view books as an author’s baby so I don’t get pleasure in completely trashing a book for the sake of clout or whatever. I guess there’s a third reason: it has to have fatal flaws with characterization or story/plot progression that I can’t get over to give it a low rating.
But I struggled for the first time in the Smartypants Romance universe. I hate writing this review because I want to be fair, but Aly Stiles lost me with Stage Smart. I read Street Smart, Play Smart, and Look Smart, and I enjoyed those stories, but I think she tried too hard for the silly that she failed to fully develop the chemistry between Larinda and Val in a way that is believable. I will recognize that Aly Stiles is an insta-attraction/insta-relationship author. Through her other “smart” books, this wasn’t as pronounced as Stage Smart because I spent much of this book questioning Val and Larinda’s relationship. Even as a forbidden/secret relationship romance, I kept asking “why.”
I’m also over Chad Smith and Sandeke Telecom/Reedweather Media’s ineptitude. It’s time to move away from it or shade it in a different color because I wanted to love Stage Smart, but I just couldn’t.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 