Just the Sexiest Man Alive

Book: Just the Sexiest Man Alive by Julie James

Taylor Donovan is a lawyer working towards partner in an illustrious law firm, and she's well on the track to it. When she is given an opportunity to further prove herself in a highly-publicized class-action sexual harassment suit, she jumps at it, even though the case requires her to leave her Chicago office for the Los Angeles branch and stay there for the duration of the case. After all, a couple of months in sunny, celebrity-town L.A. is no hardship at all, is it?

We are introduced to Taylor in the opening pages, where she's annihilating her opposing counsel's arguments for settlement. And it. is. awesome. I have a soft spot for competent, no-nonsense, career-minded heroines in romance novels. This is partly to make up for all those times they were cast as The Other Woman in contrast with the virginal homemaker heroine and mostly to shout: Yeah world, romance and careers CAN mix! Ahem. Moving on.

Poor Taylor gets her first taste of how celebrity-driven L.A. works, when her boss sets her a side assignment to give pointers to actor Jason Andrews on his upcoming role as an attorney in a legal thriller. Who is Jason Andrews, you ask? Why, he's Just the Sexiest Man Alive. According to People magazine, anyway. Though galled by the thought of having to kowtow to some frat boy, Taylor is still intrigued because hey, even she who's been living under a rock has watched Jason Andrews' movies. Any goodwill she may have mustered for the job is dashed, however, when the actor stands her up twice in a row. Needless to say, when he finally does come around to meet her, Taylor is less than impressed.

Jason Andrews may be larger than life, but Taylor has been going head-to-head with men all her life, and she's more than a match for his ego. Sparks fly, and hijinks ensue.

I was a bit leery about the set-up at first, because I'm kind of pessimistic about Hollywood romances in general, and wasn't sure I'd find myself believing in the eventual HEA. It didn't help when the hero Jason initially started out proving every celebrity stereotype true. But Ms James has a gift with turning her spoiled, arrogant heroes into likeable, sometimes-vulnerable and basically decent guys.

...I hesitated a little with that last bit though. Jason, the hero, IS portrayed as decent at heart most of the time, even though I felt that his past womanizing actions said otherwise. Plus those actions were only alluded to and so felt even more removed from the Jason that was presented to the reader, I guess. In the end, the only reason I could gauge why Jason was so horrible to the women in his life was because they were all attention-seeking sluts who only cared for his fame anyway. Sometimes I wonder, why do these men get so bitter about meeting exactly the type of women they were looking for?

But all that's just a minor quibble, because the author managed to convince me that yeah, he was probably just looking in the wrong places this whole time (I know, I cringed a bit at that sentence too, but Ms James honestly did a good job of it!). Once you're convinced of that, the rest of the journey is a delightful romp that makes you laugh and sigh and fall for all the characters involved (Ms James does friendships with secondary characters beautifully). The chemistry and dialogue between the characters were amazing. I think I would love Julie James for her dialogue alone.

I liked that the ultimate issue in the end wasn't Jason's past, but Taylor's trust (or lack thereof) in him. That with Jason having done his best to prove himself, there was nothing more he could do or say to convince her -- the ball was in Taylor's court. And boy, did she pick it up.

So I started out this book with two marks against it: one, it was a Hollywood romance, and two, it was a contemporary. The latter because I've always thought contemporary settings unmemorable and indeed, up until Julie James, that had always been the case for me. And despite the less than auspicious start, this book still managed to win me over with a 5-star rating. I can't wait to try out her other books. 5/5 on goodreads.