Married Lovers by Jackie Collins Published by St. Martin's Press on 10 June 2008
Genres: Adult, Contemporary
Pages: 512
Format: eBook
Source: Kindle Purchase
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Three high-powered Hollywood couples, two hot affairs, one underage Russian ex-hooker, a passionate murder—and the players’ lives are changed forever.
Cameron Paradise, a stunningly beautiful twenty-four-year-old personal trainer, flees Hawaii and her champion-surfer husband, Gregg, in the middle of one of his abusive tirades and makes her way to L.A. Tall, blond, with a body to die for, it doesn’t take Cameron long to find a job at an exclusive private fitness club where she encounters LA's most important players. She has plans to open her own studio one day, and while every man she meets comes on to her, she is more focused on saving money and working hard than getting caught up in the L.A. scene of wild parties and recreational drugs.Until she meets Ryan Lambert, an extremely successful independent movie producer. Ryan is married to overly privileged Mandy Lambert, the daughter of Hamilton J. Heckerling, a Hollywood power-player son-of-a-bitch mogul. Ryan has never cheated on his demanding Hollywood Princess wife, but when he meets Cameron, all bets are off, especially since she’s seeing his best friend Don Verona, the devastatingly attractive talk-show host and legendary player.
In her latest sizzling blockbuster, internationally bestselling author Jackie Collins explores what happens when lust and desire collide with marriage and power—and the results lead to murder.
Married Lovers is in the same vein as other Collins novels, with intricate characters, lots of Hollywood intrigue and some quite enticing happenings.
My Married Lovers review:
In between the intrigue and the intricate characters, I did feel that Married Lovers was also a little formulaic. I didn’t mind it too much, but it did cross my mind more than once while I was reading. The cast of characters is pretty dense, and the very different lives they have been leading up until now somehow became pretty tangled up, and the way secrets and the past were dealt with differed for each of them.
I think that the fact that there were so many characters being followed, Married Lovers didn’t appeal to me as much as it could have. These kinds of stories that have a slight paparazzi feel to them are a different kind of pleasure, but I didn’t really invest in any of the characters very much. The one I found the most interesting was, strangely, the one with the least page-time – Anya / Pola. Now she was definitely something, her life had been hell, and by force of her own struggles and fighting, and a strike of luck, she was able to make things a little bit easier for herself. I would read a whole book based solely on her and her struggles, even with her unhappy ending.
The writing is good, and it was easy to follow the different characters’ voices to know whose chapter I was reading. Written in third person past tense, the story flowed easily, and allowed for seeing the inner workings of several characters in one story. If you’re looking for a story that is quite crafty, with many characters who are all hiding something, you should give Married Lovers a try.
Some of my favorite Married Lovers quotes:
Charlene was an ode to Botox, Juvena, silicone, collagen, and any other facial fillers on the market.
Lucy had a plan. And that plan was to make a major comeback in a major movie and all the people who’d written her movie-star days off could go eat shit.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
About Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms
Linda is an English as foreign language teacher and has a Master's degree in English Language and Literature. She's an avid reader, blogger, compulsive one-clicker and a genre omnivore. Ever since she learnt how to read she has been seen with a book or two in her hands everywhere she goes.
The suspense of the character’s secrets sounds good in this one
Yes, the secondary character and her life was very interesting Brandi.
Twitter: talksupeblog
I haven’t read JCollins in a super long time! She does this types of novels frequently though, right? Like her trope is always celebrity, rich, caviar lifestyle?
Yup, that’s it, Braine 🙂
My mom is a huge Jackie Collins fan. This story sounds a bit disappointing. I think as bloggers, we get bored with formulaic stories because we read so much. It is difficult to connect with characters when there are so many to follow. Good Review Lexx 🙂
I think you’re right, Lindy, reading as much as we do, we want more 🙂 I used to be totally engrossed by Collins years ago, the Hollywood glamour did me in every time.
It is so important to me that the characters have defined voices in alternate narration, so that’s good. I haven’t read a Jackie Collins book since middle school when I read Chances in the 8th grade, like that is any kind of appropriate. Ha! I realize now that my mom didn’t pay any mind to what I read.
Hehe, Suzi 🙂 I read a lot of adult books when I was in the 8th grade, too. I don’t think I’d discovered Jackie Collins yet then, though 🙂 And my parents let me read whatever I wanted… even back then, I was the only big reader in the family.