Outtakes by Tibby Armstrong

Title: Outtakes

Series: Hollywood, #4

Author: Tibby Armstrong

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Length: Novella (137 pages)

Publisher: Loose Id (August 19^th, 2013)

Heat Level: Explicit

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥4 Hearts

Reviewer: Thommie

Blurb: After actor Kit Harris tells the world he’s gay, life isn’t all cupcakes and rainbow flags. It’s decidedly less tasty and a lot less colorful. Coming out might not have been the best thing for a Hollywood career or a high-profile love life.

Try as he might, rising star Jeremy Ash can’t seem to stir Kit’s interest long enough to heal his bruised ego or fragile heart. Complicating matters, a celebrity chef enters with plans to cook up a new angle on Kit’s career.

Jeremy’s worried Kit’s going off half-baked, or worse, turning up the heat on a new relationship. Either way, Jeremy knows the situation is a recipe for disaster if he and Kit can’t come up with the ingredients to love.

Product Link: http://www.loose-id.com/hollywood-4-outtakes.html

Review: Tibby Armstrong comes back with my favorite couple from the Hollywood Series, Jeremy and Kit, with excruciating story. Let me tell you, half the time reading this book was spend biting my nails, and the other half wanting to smack some reason at either one of the characters.

After Kit came out at the Awards three years have gone by. Three years but things didn’t get better, neither remained the same. Jeremy made a leap in his career, being the new favorite boy of the city, while Kit’s career is hitting bottom hard. His whole life is changing and Kit finds it difficult to adjust or even take control back. The self-assured, over-confident, and favorite paparazzi boy is now buried underneath a strong layer of self-doubt and fear. Fear for his work, fear for his life, and fear for his love.

Jeremy on the other hand has made leaps from that starry-eyed kid Kit first met. No longer a newbie in the scene, his confidence shines bright, and he appear to need Kit and his experience less and less every day, making Kit’s panic attacks rise and that fear of being left behind overshadow everything.

The first thought that came to mind while reading this book was how real this all seamed. The problems a long-time relationship accumulates, the fears, the inability to make things work because you simply don’t know how, all that made me feel like I was observing a real couple out of their window, instead of read a book. The most impressive thing of all was that Tibby made a great job not making one the jerk and the other the martyr. In this relationship there is not only one’s fault. Both Jeremy and Kit make their own mistakes, both help to create a chasm between them, both men’s fears and insecurities coming out in knee-jerk reactions, creating monsters out of shadows. All their differences that once upon a time helped them stick together now are tearing them apart.

When Kit fails to find that balance in his life he dives into the only thing that can ground him; his baking. More and more nights he spends cooking little things at the only place that gives him a semblance of peace; his kitchen. He manages to win a celebrity show and that’s how we get introduced to a new character, Andy, a famous chef who has his sight on Kit.

You know how they say no one can tear you apart from your mate, unless the tears are already there. Grabbing opportunity of the fragile relationship between Jeremy and Kit, Andy is determined to win him the prize with a scary obsession. Fear of rejection for his new dreams has Kit hiding them from Jeremy, along with the new excitement that someone new is seeing him and wanting him again, and things steadily reach rock bottom.

And you can’t imagine how very easy it was to dislike and despise characters this time around. I felt like really hitting Kit, his selfishness at times made it hard to think clearly. I also got angry with Jeremy, too. As I said, there was not only one to blame here. But I despised Andy with a passion. I literally saw red with this one.

The entire book was an angst-fest, with things going hot and cold in a matter of seconds. One moment we were reading the most powerful lovemaking from Jeremy and Kit, sexual scenes that were so freaking easy to immerse in them, and the other everything, everything crashing down. Painfully sad at times, this book manages to steal your breath away, shake, and spin you around not letting go for a moment to clear your mind. Gripping is inadequate a word to describe it. Torturous would be more like it. It tortures you with the ever-increasing intense scenes that follow one another unfailingly, with a speed that makes you gasp and pant in order to follow and not be left behind.

As much as I liked Jeremy’s and Kit’s first story Acting Out, I think I liked this even more. It was what I expected, and definitely didn’t let me down.