Included on The Skimm’s 2020 list of Eight Books Both You and Mom Will Love “The sleeper hit of the pandemic . . . . There is no escapism like reading about a nearly middle-aged woman embarking on a glittering, global love affair with a thoughtful young sex god . . . . It’s electric, triumphant to read.” —Vogue.com “An OMG page-turner.” —Gabrielle UnionSolène Marchand, the thirty-nine-year-old … Union
Solène Marchand, the thirty-nine-year-old owner of an art gallery in Los Angeles, is reluctant to take her daughter, Isabelle, to meet her favorite boy band. But since her divorce, she’s more eager than ever to be close to Isabelle. The last thing Solène expects is to make a connection with one of the members of the world-famous August Moon. But Hayes Campbell is clever, winning, confident, and posh, and the attraction is immediate. That he is all of twenty years old further complicates things.
What begins as a series of clandestine trysts quickly evolves into a passionate and genuine relationship. It is a journey that spans continents as Solène and Hayes navigate each other’s worlds: from stadium tours to international art fairs to secluded hideaways in Paris and Miami. For Solène, it is a reclaiming of self, as well as a rediscovery of happiness and love. When Solène and Hayes’ romance becomes a viral sensation, and both she and her daughter become the target of rabid fans and an insatiable media, Solène must face how her romantic life has impacted the lives of those she cares about most.
more
OMG…this is without a doubt one of the best stories I’ve read this year. The Idea of You was engrossing, charming and riveting. It evoked so many emotions while I was reading this book, and it broke my heart yet I can’t stop thinking about it. Solene and Hayes were the most unlikely couple yet they were just perfect. Their chemistry was outstanding and I loved them together. Inspite of all the odd stacked against them, you will be rooting for them right down to the end of the story. The story starts off as a taboo story about a 39 year old woman and the rockstar half her age, but soon turns into an epic love story which will touch your heart in so many ways.
I listened to the audible version of this novel which was narrated by Robinne Lee. Her delivery and timing was phenomenal and she portrayed the characters perfectly especially with that accent for Solene. She definitely brought this story to life and I loved her voice.
The Idea of You was an exceptional page-turner. I loved it and would highly recommend it to all lovers of taboo romances.
Loved this book!
Lingers with you well after you finish reading it
I just can’t stop thinking about this story even tho I finished the book a week ago. My heart wants more
Every once in a blue moon I come across a book that is exceptional. For me, this is one of those books. I loved everything about it. The characters were so well developed right along with the storyline. The main character’s struggles were so on point (well at least from a mothers point of view) that I found myself feeling sorry for Solene (great name, btw) and my heart broke for Hayes. This book is a must read for sure!!!
A juicy, delicious, heart wrenching love story. I tore through it, a page-turner.
I loved this book, it gave me all the feels. Such a bittersweet story that dealt with real issues
This haunting love story is not a novel I can forget. When I started reading, I expected a breezy, glitzy sex romp, but THE IDEA OF YOU gut-slammed me: as an older women trying to not feel invisible, as a wife with a much older spouse, as a semi-public figure who’s had disturbing interactions with ‘fans’ on social media. There are so many layers to this beautifully written story, and the characters … oh my. Hayes is wise beyond his years, but there are painful reminders of his youth; Isabelle is a 12-year-old trying, desperately, to be brave so her mother can be happy. And Solene is a beautiful, talented woman torn between what her heart wants and what her daughter needs. Ahhh…I can’t stop thinking about those characters. Please, please can we have a sequel!
I was surprised I liked this as much as I did. The premise seemed implausible but the author pulled it off beautifully with her writing. Kind of fascinating to read about the lives that rock stars and wealthy people live.
Four stars because I finished it, even if I had to pinch my nose.
A quick read but with a pretentious, unlikable protagonist and an implausible 20-year-old sex god. If you love 50 Shades of Grey, you’ll probably love this too—except for the ending. (Maybe the author will try to fix that in a sequel? After all, Ms. Lee, you have all those adoring fans to please…)
Pros
– Decent attempt to overturn ‘women over 20 are too old to be sexy’ trope (although that only seems to apply to the 1% of women who are drop-dead gorgeous at 40, so don’t get your hopes up.)
– A great depiction of compelling, all-consuming physical attraction/addiction. It’s difficult to write well, and Ms. Lee succeeds.
– Gut-wrenching look at how painful it can be to be famous. (This is the best part of the book.)
– The writing is smooth and compelling, if repetitive. Some fans don’t seem to mind the later.
– It does NOT have a Happily Ever After ending (which accounts for most of the bad reviews, lol).
Cons
– Really terrible cover. Looks self-published by a noob (but it does capture the pretentious tone of the book.)
– Typos in the Kindle ebook edition. Hello, St. Martin’s? You’re giving Big-5 publishers a bad reputation!
– I got really tired of hearing about Solene’s designer clothes and designer furniture and designer art and designer fragrances and designer hotels and designer shoes and designer purses, for godssake. Buy a pair of jeans at Target, lady, and shut up about the label.
– Solene’s a failure as a mother from the get-go. It’s cringe-worthy. I kept repeating “You should not have had ANY children!” And then we have to suffer through her fantasizing about having ANOTHER child with band boy. The whole thing is scary bad.
– I kept falling out of the story: Solene lets her ex-husband define her and treat her like a disobedient child (and then she laments about how she wants his approval anyway?! Good grief.) Her preteen daughter is an inconvenient bauble to be shipped off to summer camp (again), tricked into thinking her mom is spending all that time away at work, and manipulated by band boy. The protagonist compromises herself repeatedly out of some sad need to impress him with her sexual prowess? (Do we really need to know she suffered through anal because he was so good to look at?) I was embarrassed for Solene, for her naïveté, immaturity, and constant need to be seen as sexy.
– Early on, I stopped being wowed by band boy’s ever-hard penis or entertained by his “sordid” past—and just annoyed by the lack of believable storytelling. He slept with his best friend’s sister. THAT’s scandalous? One of the guys in the band is gay (but the author can’t actually come out and say that)? The other guys in the band are sexually abusing underage girls who Solene has to rescue? Really? Maybe this should be shelved in Tragic Fantasy because with the current ending, it’s definitely not Romance.
– The whole ‘older woman, younger man empowerment trope’ is quickly overshadowed by the author’s disheartening conclusion that a woman’s worth is solely tied up in how attractive men find her. There are mentions of Solene’s work and (pretentious) education, but it all comes down to her sex appeal. And we’re celebrating that? It’s a pretty painful pill to swallow, even with a slug of designer Scotch. (The biggest trait Solene & Hayes share is their love of very expensive things.)
– Given all that, it was difficult to like the story, the protagonist, or the author. They all come off as shallow, selfish, and ostentatious (and really bad parents). If you can overlook all that, perhaps you’ll fall for the fantasy and become a raving fan. Maybe that was all Ms. Lee was going for?
TLDR:
Check it out from the library but prepare to cringe in between the sparks. It’s romance porn without the HEA.
~D. L. Orton, author of the best-selling Between Two Evils series. Read the 1st book in the series, Crossing In Time: A Dystopian Love Story (Between Two Evils Book 1), for free right now!
THIS book….profoundly affecting. Yes, it’s a romance and full of all things romance novels include. But it’s SOOOOO MUCH MORE. Funny and lovely and thrilling and taboo and heartbreakingly aching. This woman…and this man…will resonate with me for a long time to come. I listened on Audible and it’s read by the author and she’s amazing. This story made me FEEL and Robinne’s narration is perfection. Highly recommended!
This book was an amazing, more than 5 star read. She takes a woman, speaks from her point of view as a mother and woman, and makes it beautiful and raw. It takes a woman that is older and gives you real life situations. This author makes real life happen right before your eyes. She creates a masterpiece that will blow your mind and make you cry.
The characters are real. The situations make you feel so many emotions. This was a truly amazing, real life story with one crazy, mind blowing ending.
This book basically wrecked me. That’s all I will say. It’s one of my absolute favorites.
Don’t miss this delicious May/December romance!
So…I just read this incredible book this week and I could not put it down. Yes I know it is currently $9.99 and sometimes that’s a lot of money for we bookacholics. If you can’t get it now, add it to your TBR. It is a May/December love story that had me turning the pages as fast as I could. This story is breathtaking and you will want to be Solenè. I guarantee! It was worth every word, every tear, every delicious moment. I have since started following the author and perusing her page to find any additional tidbits. One thing I found out…the rights to the story have been picked up for a movie version.
AND…I can’t wait
NOTE TO AUTHOR: We need more! Please
I am really not even sure what to say about this book…
While the premise sounded somewhat unbelievable – a mom hooking up with a 20 year old member of a world famous boy band – somehow the entire book read true. It just felt real as you were reading it. I read through this quickly because I needed to know what became of them. They had such a beautiful love story.
But now that I am done, I just don’t know how I feel. I loved the book, but I have so many questions. I want more. I need more. Please give us more!
Every now and then you run across a book that sucks you in from the very beginning and you just know that it’s going to be a book that’s going to stay with you for a long time. The Idea of You is definitely one of those books. The writing, the compelling story, and the emotion in this novel will leave you feeling everything imaginable by the time you get to the end.
Thirty-nine year old Solene, a divorced gallery owner and mother of 12-year old daughter Isabelle, is doing her best to move on with her life after her divorce. Little did she know that taking her daughter and her two friends to an August Moon concert she was going to catch the eye of one of the members of the hottest boy band around.
Twenty year old Brit, Hayes Campbell, is the brainchild behind August Moon. He’s wise beyond his years, as well as being drop dead gorgeous, thoughtful and undeniably talented. The connection he makes with Solene is immediate and hard to deny.
I don’t want to give too much else away except to say that this book truly had everything you could ever want in a story. It kept me on the edge of my seat, it entertained me, it angered me, it elated me and it made me sad. I truly don’t know if there is an emotion I didn’t feel while reading this book. It touched on issues in pop culture, sacrifices that mothers make and how torn those can make them feel and we see that double-standards are still alive and well today.
This is truly one of those books that I know I’m going to be thinking about for a very long time and I’m really glad I went along for the ride. It makes you think, feel and hope. Kudos to Robinne Lee for penning this amazing novel.
This is one of the best books I have ever read. The plot and characters were superbly developed. The conversations were spot on. The heroine is a 39 year old divorced mother, Solene Marchand, whose daughter is in love with a boy band, August Moon. At a meet and greet which Solene escorts Isabelle and her friends, she meets the leader of the Group, Hayes Campbell, age 20. Hayes is more interested in Solene than in the girls and pushes for a relationship with Solene. Excellent read. Kept me entranced the whole time. The Idea of You has a facebook page which is admined by the author, Robinne Lee whom you might recognize as the actress who played Roz in the Fifty Shades movies.
Having been a forbidden & Tabboo fan and having read some excellent books in the genre, I was really looking forward to the book which has kept the Booklandia abuzz for quite some time.
Solène is a 39 year old Art Gallery owner in Cali and a teenage daughter who screams at the mere mention of August Moon.
a Quintet of handsome lads from Britain who sang pleasant pop songs and drove tween girls mad
Her walls are adorned with posters of them and like a normal teen, she stalks them on social media.
Particularly Hayes Campbell, the sexy swaggering star of the band.
Girls go crazy at the sight of him. The fan frenzy is beyond logic, he’s stalked, mobbed, swooned over by thousands by seconds
It’s pure mayhem!!
He’s way more mature for his age, having played the field quite a bit, which is almost a necessary evil as part of the package of being a revered Rock star
Solène is almost having an identity crisis, which again could be an onset of midlife crisis, being triggered by the fact that her husband has left her for a newer/younger model and she has this building resentment to the labels and boxes she being put under -“Daniel’s wife”, “Isabelle’s mom”
Their chance encounter is a revelation for both of them, likeUnfolding a Flower
The meeting, which was supposed to be Just a Lunch builds up to much, much more and then starts the clandestine affair. It goes from Lust to Love pretty fast and then the mess shows up. Right at her door!
Angry fans, heartbroken daughter, pissed off Daniel and the pressures of long distance relationship between two completely opposite worlds of a single mom in L.A & a Jet-setting, globe-trotting Boy Band Rock Star. How the twain shall endure?
The ending though heartbreaking was one of the most befitting turn of events and conclusion which could’ve been.
Now to the writing part.
The characters, though were uncomfortably implausible, but were not impossible.
Robinne seems to be a huge One Direction fan, it seems. Hayes was a tailored and customised Harry Styles. His Oliver was Louis, cause 1D had an infamous song”Olivia” a play on words”I love ya” written by Harry, a secret gift for Louis who he probably had an affair with.
Getting back on track, The mannerisms, personality, looks, concert events, lyrics and peripherals including the management were all too cheesily similar to One Direction , for it to be a coincidence.
She herself has quoted:-
all disheveled in the wrinkled Prada shirt and his hair sticking out in 51 directions
Rapunzel hair
The writing was pretty average with hardly any memorable lines or words that would stay with you.
The sentiment behind the story- of an older woman falling for a sexy, savvy musician wasn’t novel, but was interesting. An older woman claiming her sexuality is an empowering sentiment and should’ve, could’ve been highlighted more than just the overtly sex scenes. But that’s just my opinion
It could’ve been played so well in hands of an accomplished writer. Now it just turned out to be a poor attempt at a Harry Styles FanFic!
The Idea of The You(an age gap romance) was really good except it failed in execution
it may not be for me, but please go ahead and read the book and form your own opinion
I’m NOT SAYING that Robinne shouldn’t have written it, just that I should be skipped it!
3 stars for Amorous Dealer
Have you ever begun a book certain that you couldn’t buy into the concept? Well, when I started this novel about a woman pushing 40 and a 19-year-old rock star, I was positive I would be rolling my eyes by page 20. Instead I sat up and read it straight through, and was left with a book hangover that continues to this day. It was steamy, compelling and unbelievably convincing. Read it. You will never wish for a happy ending for two characters the way you will for Solene and Hayes.
So this will be short, but sweet. Loved this read! Ripped my heart out and I’d do it all over again!! Thank you to my book babe that recommended this fantastic read!