Her lying, cheating husband betrayed her. Devastated, she quit her teaching job. Now Robyn Rose isn’t sure she has it in her to start over again in the only job she ever really enjoyed—the theatre. But support for her penniless artistic future is limited, until she meets Joseph James Davis. He is the director of Robyn’s last-chance gig, and has some unique, over-his-lap sorts of ideas about what … about what it takes to keep his stage manager on her best behavior. He also might just be her last chance at love.
Now, if only they can get their lead actress (who is also his ex-girlfriend) to take the stage without destroying their possibility at a future together.
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Title: Taking The Stage
Author: Paige Parsons
Series: n/a (well, not yet anyway)
Genre: Romance, Interracial Romance (BWWM)
Pages: 134
Taking the Stage is the debut novel of Paige Parsons and I have to say I loved every second of it. I’ve never read a romance novel with the intention of sharing my experience with the public, but I’ve decided to go for it anyway. You know, why not?! That being said, let’s jump right in to it.
This book centers around the working and personal relationships of stage manager Robyn (Roby) Rose and her director Joseph (don’t-call-him-Joey) Davis. Roby has moved back to her home state of Arizona because she suffered a massive personal blow; she caught her husband with his head between the legs of a hot young teacher. Considering that he was the principle of the school that both women worked at, he’s lucky there wasn’t a messy lawsuit along with professional embarrassment. Roby, however, stuck it out for the rest of the school year and then bounced which is more than I can say for myself, I honestly would have walked right out of his office never to be seen or heard from again.
Anyway, after a few weeks or so in good old AZ, Roby is settling into a new apartment and is handed a job at a theatre in town. Roby is chronically late to everything which drives Joseph crazy. He wants to resolve the problem and gives her a choice: 1) every minute late will be docked from her pay or 2) each minute results in a swat. A SWAT!! As in, spanking. There is spanking in this book! At first I thought, “Mm sounds like a sexual harassment lawsuit to me,” because well, he is her boss. But as the book went on I became okay with it because the spanking wasn’t sexualized. What was sexy though, was the dialogue and their inner monologues about each other. I could feel the sexual tension between them as the story progressed. Throughout the novel, our potential lovers deal with family, meddling mentors and an old flame come back to town in the form of a desperately needed leading actress.
Now, I know I listed above that Taking the Stage is an interracial romance novel but I didn’t really touch on it. In all honesty, the book doesn’t either. The most we get is the occasional description of her skin comparing her to chocolate, which I hate! Why are black characters always described in conjunction with food? Ugh. We don’t describe white characters as mashed potato colored. Anyway, I did like that race never came up. Roby’s blackness is never used against her nor is Joseph’s whiteness used against him. Seriously, I loved that this is a modern story and that race just isn’t an issue.
Overall I really enjoyed this book. Once I got past the, um, “original” spellings of Roby’s sisters’ names, Taking the Stage ended up being a very quick read. In fact, I wish the book had been a little bit longer; I could stand to know a little bit more about what happened between Joseph and his ex. But when all is said and done, this novel was fun and sexy and full of accurate theatre lingo. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, especially my theatre friends.