“You’ve done better.”With one uncharacteristically sassy tweet to her longtime celebrity crush, Zoe Miller’s life turns upside down. Ultrahot A-lister Chase Covington doesn’t just respond to Zoe’s tweet, he does the unthinkable: he messages Zoe directly. Now she must decide between walking away or meeting her crush in person.Chase knows better than to trust anyone from the Internet, but Zoe’s … Internet, but Zoe’s saucy challenge has totally caught his interest—and her girl-next-door personality is keeping it. He’s been burned enough to know he needs to keep his heart close. But his feelings for Zoe might be a lot more than just an online flirtation. He just has to convince her…
When the press gets wind of Zoe and Chase’s secret relationship, their romance turns into tabloid headlines. Will they be able to hold on to their Hollywood love story?
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This was the first of Sariah Wilson’s books that I’ve read. I love, love, LOVE her writing style and characters! Somehow she’s able to write a sweet, romantic story that is steamy, yet clean. The Cinderella in me loves the HEA. Well done!
Zoe and her best friend, Lexi, have been in love with Chase Covington since they were 12 years old. For years he’s been that dream that was always and forever out of reach. So imagine Zoe’s surprise when one sassy tweet from her gains a reply from Chase. Did he really just acknowledge her for all the world to see?! And is he really carrying on a conversation with her through Twitter?! She just can’t believe it! But through all her excitement a nagging voice in the back of her mind informs her that there is no way Chase Covington would even look twice at someone like her.
When Zoe calls Chase out in a tweet, he can’t help but be intrigued by her. Never has anyone ever disagreed with anything he said or did. He’s Chase Covington and everyone, including his own mother, is always out to get something from him. So when someone like Zoe comes along, he finds her refreshing. Finally. Someone who is real and is not afraid to tell it like it is. Call him crazy but fate seems to be working in his favor.
Is this really happening?! Is Zoe really hanging out with and getting to know Chase?! It just seems too good to be true! With everything so new, she doesn’t want anything or anyone messing up what little chance she might have with Chase. Thank goodness for that NDA she had to sign. Now she legally CAN’T tell anyone about her and Chase. When it’s just the two of them, it’s easy to get lost in the moment. But when they are not together, guilt for lying to her best friend and family slowly starts eating away at her. Soon. She will tell them soon. She just needs a little more time with Chase. She’s not ready to come out of their bubble and face the real world.
But when information about their secret relationship is leaked to the press, everything starts to unravel around her. She’s losing not only Chase but her best friend as well. How can something so amazing cause so much pain and anguish?! She loves Chase with all her heart and would never do anything to jeopardize what they have together. But Chase doesn’t believe her. Everyone else around him is always using him to get whatever they want. What makes Zoe any different?
Broken and alone, Zoe does her best to pick herself up and move on. But without Chase in her life, everything feels wrong. And she’s not the only one that notices it. Chase has been miserable since their breakup. Things were said in the heat of the moment that can’t be taken back. He didn’t mean what he said. He knows that Zoe would never do anything to hurt him or use him. He has to earn her trust back. He has to win HER back. He doesn’t know how he’s going to do it, but he’s determined to make Zoe his once again. She needs to be back in his life where she belongs. Never, ever underestimate a man in love… you will lose.. Every. Single. Time!
*dreamy sigh*
Oh. My. Gosh! You guys! Drop whatever you are reading right now and grab this book! I just can’t tell you how much I loved it! It was SO good! And that ending! How perfect was THAT?! I have to tell you that I kept getting mad when real life got in the way of my reading time! I did NOT want to stop reading to be an adult! I mean come on! Who wants to be an adult when you could be reading #Starstruck?! I can tell you right now that I will definitely be reading this book over and over again!
Ms. Wilson did such an AMAZING job of sucking me into her book! I did NOT want to put this one down! I really need to check out more books by her! I can’t wait to see what she has in store for us next!
I enjoyed this story beginning to end. There just aren’t many heartfelt simple, clean, love stories written too often. This book kept me smiling and gave me butterflies all throughout the book. Great read. Well thought out story. I loved it!
This was an absolute delight to read! The characters were so REAL, their story was one many of us would hope for and it was funny, cute, adorable, sweet and swoon-worthy.
This is my first book from the author and I totally loved her writing. I felt complete joy by the time I finished. It was so refreshing and light-hearted, yet still held enough emotion in its depths that it just gave me everything I could hope for.
Zoe Miller’s Twitter activity lead to a dream come true. Who doesn’t fantasize about your favorite actor or actress responding and from their a romance and love builds?? I know I do. Chase Covington was an A-list actor who was down to earth, kind and caring. He was nothing like his celebrity status would indicate.
Together they built the most honest and gentle and funny friendship that just build from there. It laid the strongest foundation for an everlasting love story.
This was just PERFECT!
I LOVED this book! It was sweet, cute, beautiful, and funny.
I received this book in my Bookworm Box subscription this month and was instantly captured by the blurb, and so I downloaded it (since it’s in Kindle Unlimited, and I don’t read my paperbacks). I liked it a lot more than I had expected to!
Chase is an actor who has not had the easiest upbringing. But neither has Zoe. When Zoe replies to a Twitter question, he likes her honesty in her response. With a lot of luck and coincidences, these two meet and begin a friendship that turns into more.
I loved the premise of this story. I liked Chase’s character a lot, and liked most of everything about Zoe, with the exception of her keeping her relationship a secret from her best friends because she’s worried about her reaction. The writing was done very well; there were parts that I think dragged on a bit, and the ending seemed a bit rushed, but overall the pace was good. I will definitely consider other books by Sariah Wilson!
No heavy reading here. Easy, fun romp with LOL moments and such likable characters. #clevertechtidbits
Oh, hello, this boy is swoony… I think my heart has melted into a puddle of goo….. At 56%, he still hasn’t kissed her yet… The anticipation was at Defcon 1! And, finally… Ahhhhh….up against a door, caged in… Yeah, that’ll do it…. of course they kept it PG, although a little more would have been nice. All sorts of things you can do that are not sex that could have spiced that up. Although it didn’t need it. It was still a lovely, heartwarming and endearing story of chemistry ignited by the brain. And boy did he BURN!
Then the shoe drops, and it hurts. But, really, it was like for a minute… I did like the line
“Probably because happiness doesn’t leave scars.”
Chase was all sorts a swoony, and a good man trying to be a better man… and she was so strong, yet vulnerable and insecure, but she never got whiney. She was always feisty and fiery and smart. Their quick whit and banter was sweet and cheesey … The best kind of Cheese!
Loved the kids, boy, they made me laugh…
Loved it! 4.5 stars. A smart entertaining romance with terrific characters. A well written story that’s funny, sweet and romantic. Loved the social media aspect of the story and the slow burn romance between Zoe and Chase was wonderful. Worth the read
Ms. Wilson makes the impossible seem plausible. She blurs the line between fantasy and reality, while running away with your heart. #Startruck is a romantic dream. It blends witty dialogue, unbelievable situations and spine-tingling attraction to create an almost perfect modern day fairytale. Zoe has her feet planted firmly on the ground until a spur of the moment act has all eyes on her. The man of her secret dreams is about to rock her world. Chase resides in a world that thrives on fantasy, but his reality is quickly getting old and his heart is ready to get back to the real world. Sariah Wilson puts her heart on full display with each story she creates and that is why she is a favorite of mine.
New Adult, PG-13, Hollywood, Cinderella-type romance
Zoe Miller is a 21-year-old college senior at UCLA who is pursuing a degree in accounting. For almost a decade, she and her BFF, Lexi, have been major fangirls of 25-year-old Chase Covington, a handsome, ripped movie star who has been acting since childhood and is so talented, he has already won an Academy Award and is one of the highest paid actors in the world.
Out of hundreds of thousands of tweets directed at his official Twitter account from his rabid female fans on a daily basis, Chase somehow notices a single negative tweet which Zoe has written in response to his tweet soliciting praise for his newest movie release. Chase responds to her tweet and engages in a quick, clever back-and-forth with her. Later, he private messages Zoe and becomes so fascinated by her, he starts reading her blog, which mainly consists of trivia quotes and, naturally enough, has only about two followers, her mother and Lexi. Within days of these mind-bogglingly improbable events, another enormous coincidence occurs. Lexi connives an opportunity to meet Chase during a promo interview for his new movie during a local radio show in LA. Lexi brings Zoe along with her, and Zoe meets Chase in person. At that encounter, Chase recognizes Zoe’s name, due to tracking down her blog, and he goes out of his way to talk to her, appearing fascinated with her. And thus begins the romance of Chase and Zoe, during which Zoe, in spite of being a quite average young woman who has been mad about Chase since her preteen years, manages to display an amazing lack of intimidation by consistently interacting with Chase as if he’s just an ordinary mortal like her.
This book is written entirely from the first-person point of view of Zoe. We are never once given enough of a description of her to have any idea what she looks like. All we know is her hair and eye color, and that she never eats anything but junk food and never exercises, which one might logically assume would make her what is euphemistically termed a “curvy” heroine. She certainly does not believe in dedicating any effort whatsoever toward maintaining a healthy and fit body, unlike Chase who exercises daily and eats a very healthy diet. Our only indication that Zoe presumably must be very good looking is that Chase is madly attracted to her.
Listening to this book in the relatively slow format of 80 words per minute of an audiobook, compared to zipping along reading a book at around 400 words per minute, it became strongly obvious to me how much focus there is on sex in this romance novel for a book that doesn’t have any actual consummated sex in it. So much so that I would personally consider this book PG-13.
I’ve been noticing lately that there seems to be a tacitly agreed upon standard technique that is consistently used by romance authors, including this one, who, due to their own personal religious beliefs–which are virtually never shared by the virgin heroines of their novels–go about eliminating, not only consummated sex, but anything more than mild kissing from their novels. They limit their novels to the following mildly sensual activities: kissing on the lips, with no mention, ever, of the existence of tongues, and frequent instances of the hero chastely kissing the heroine on the top of her head, on her forehead, and on her nose or chin in a distinctly avuncular manner. They mention only the following body parts during kissing scenes: face, hair, neck, hands, arms, and shoulders. For the hero only, very rarely a back, chest, or six-pack abs are ogled by the heroine, but she does not touch them. The hero never touches anything on the heroine below the neck, other than her arms, hands, and feet. The trunk of her body and her legs are totally off limits.
In an unintentionally ironic reversal, though sex-filled romances can get irritating due to constantly and tiresomely mentioning sex-related body parts, I find it equally irritating wading through the machinations involved when an author absolutely refuses to admit that those same body parts even exist in sex-obsessed PG versions of romance such as this novel.
In addition, when a heroine has no religious reason for clinging staunchly to a fervent desire to be a virgin on her wedding night (given that we are far, far away from the 1950s and a social stigma for failing to do so), the motivations for her clinging to that philosophy, while being madly in love with the hero and excruciatingly attracted to him, are invariably far-fetched. In that regard, Zoe is an adamantly, holier-than-thou, self-proclaimed “celibate.” She constantly engages in the magical thinking that marriage is an absolute protection against unplanned pregnancy and venereal disease, which are her reasons for abstaining from pre-marital sex. But unhappily for her ability to live up to her convictions, she spends a great deal of time in the story panting after gorgeous, ripped Chase.
In one scene in particular, Zoe and Chase, in service of preserving her much vaunted virginity, attempt to engage in a version of Amish bundling, sleeping together asexually in the same bed, with Zoe swaddled in a voluminous nightgown that could serve as a historically accurate costume for a period drama from the 19th century. It is only with that presumed protection from evil lust that the two of them engage, for the very first time, in a full body hug. Unfortunately for this ill-conceived plan, the two of them are overcome with lust anyway, and the only reason Zoe holds onto her prized virginity is because Chase, not Zoe, stops the action before it goes too far.
The most interesting character in this book, for me, is Chase, who is a recovering alcoholic who regularly attends AA meetings and has a difficult history of being constantly used by other people his whole life, most especially by his avaricious parents. What makes Zoe interesting to him is a trope that is quite common in billionaire romances. Such heroes spend so much time around cynical, narcissistic, greedy people, they have no concept what a normally ethical and considerate human being is like. So when they, by wildly improbable chance, encounter a beautiful, sweet-natured, but reasonably assertive heroine—who neither fawns nor clings—he falls for her due to the sheer novelty factor, never realizing that there are plenty of other decent women in the world. What he really needs is to escape once in a while from the world-weary bubble he lives in, because if he did so, a woman of basic human decency would not seem like such an unheard of treasure whom he must hold onto at all costs. But, of course, this is an extremely popular trope in the romance genre, so it is what it is.
The audiobook version of this novel is narrated by voice talent, Bailey Carr. She does a good job acting out the female and child characters, and a moderately good job with male characters.
I rate this novel as follows:
Heroine: 3 stars
Hero: 5 stars
Subcharacters: 4 stars
Romance Plot: 3 stars
Writing: 3 stars
Audiobook Narration: 4 stars
Overall: 3.5 stars, rounded to 4 stars
A lot of the so-called ‘Clean’ romances I’ve read are pretty juvenile. Usually, they still curse, but just use grade-school curses of “Darnit” and such. Which is still cursing. Sigh.
A GOOD clean romance does what this one did. Get me halfway through the book before I realize that the cursing is never explicit. The characters mumble or growl incomprehensible words because the author knows even people who don’t curse are around people who may curse occasionally.
I didn’t even mind the reason for no sex, it made sense for this character.
The story was great.
Now, my problem is going to be continuing the series. Will the no-sex before marriage fit with all the stories? Because let’s face it, that’s extremely outdated and old-fashioned for adults in this day and age. I can believe it of one character, there are actual people who choose to wait – although I prefer them waiting for love, not marriage because marriage isn’t unbreakable and smacks of religion. Waiting for a true love speaks to morals. But for one person, great! Love the story.
But it stretches my belief to have so many in one series that aren’t religious yet waiting for marriage? It’s a way to preach at your readers and I really dislike that.
Not every character an author creates should have the same beliefs.
I’ll finish the series, the writing was that good. I may even pick up a different series. But if all the characters are waiting for marriage I’m going to get bored fast. It’s not the sex. I don’t have to have sex scenes.
It’s the same characters over and over again preaching the same thing. THAT isn’t what I want in a book series. I want love and variety and different characters overcoming obstacles to find the perfect love. Some may wait for sex or not, I don’t care. But I prefer authors with more than one type of story.
I want HIM for my very own. SHE was adorable. Love the siblings… “Hold my hand Cheese.” So sweet!
3.5 Stars
This is my first book by this author. I thought the story was pretty good, I liked the premise behind it. The only thing that bugged me was how very insecure Zoe is. Towards the end I was rolling my eyes at her for thinking the things she did about Chase. I just wanted to yell hey girl, stop it. I also wasn’t a very big fan of her bestie, she kinda rubbed me the wrong way. But besides that, it was a sweet story. Oh, this book is also PG. There’s no sexy times to be had, only kissing.
This book started off so great for me. The story was really interesting and had me breezing through this book. But at some point things started to slow down for me when the romance between Zoe and Chase took wayyy to long to do anything. I then started seeing Zoe’s crush as almost amateur when all she did was blush and act like a total spaz around him. She had all these preconceived notions around Chase that turned out to be completely wrong all while she was insecure and thought he wouldn’t want her when he found out she was a 20 something virgin. Epsecially when he gave no indication that he wanted sex from her. All the man wanted to do was spend time with her and get to know her.
Moving on. I also didn’t the fact that Zoe lied to everyone she knew about the fact that she knew Chase and how close they were becoming. She didn’t want to tell her mom who had like 4 little kids, because her mom left her with her grandmother so she could live her dream in Hollywood. SO she was scared her mom was going to want to relive her Hollywood glory days through her. WTF? That’s some fucked up shit. Especially when her mom was clearly struggling with working as a nurse and taking of her kids. Zoe and her best friend are Chase superfans. Did I mention that Zoe’s best friend is the one who even got Zoe on the Chase bandwagon, but she decided to lie to her about Chase. I needed Zoe to grow up, to stop being this shy and awkward girl with hella insecurities. So needless to say what started out as very promising, basically stole my high at the halfway point in this book.
The only highlight of this book was Chase and how wonderful he was and how he didn’t fit all Zoe’s stereotypes of people in Hollywood. I liked that he loved her random fact twitter posts and helped her babysit her younger siblings. He was all around great and quite lovable.
A wonderfully romantic read!!
Debbie, 1970, UK
I need to go back through all of my previously rated books and compare them to this one – this is truly a 5++++! I have read several other books by this author and I have just added her to my list of one to follow! This book was AMAZING! I will encourage my own teenage daughter to read it – it is clean and shows girls to hold out for Mr Right, be true to yourself and your beliefs. I will be reading this book again!
Two of my favorite parts from this book:
Quote – “Happiness doesn’t leave scars”
Nod to the author’s other books – “How about Marry Me? I love that show.” Lexi scrolled through our DVR with the remote. “Nah. They haven’t had a good season since they had those Monterran princes on it.”
I was provided a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
First, I love LOVE and everything about it. The whole book was swoon-worthy.
I have yet to be disappointed by this author. While every book/ series is very different some things are constant. Sariah Wilson’s writing is like sitting across from a friend recounting an epic “you’ll never guess what just happened to me!” Sort of story. The kind that makes you say, “THEN what happened?!”
Zoe is exactly that, realistic where she needs to be while also blissfully unaware of what’s building up around her, as many of us have been in love. Chase is brilliantly written, I couldn’t pin down exactly where he was coming from but I never thought he was ill-intentioned.
One-liners, laugh out loud pop culture references, and just the right amount of anticipation makes this a book that I want all the people to read.