Star Shipped
A Novel
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4.0 • 21 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Cat Sebastian’s long-awaited foray into contemporary romance! A witty, emotional, and deliciously slow burn enemies-to-lovers romance between two costars on a popular sci-fi television series.
Simon and Charlie, actors on a long-running sci-fi show, can’t stand one another. Charlie is impetuous, outgoing, and basically feral, and Simon thinks he should have stayed in reality television where he belongs. They’ve spent the better part of a decade quarreling over the spotlight and pretty much everything else, and everybody in the industry knows it. Now that Simon’s contract is finally done, he can move to New York, start fresh with work he actually likes, and get away from Charlie.
Simon’s only problem is that people might assume he’s been pushed off the show due to being impossible to work with. And he is kind of difficult to work with. He doesn’t get along with people—unlike Charlie, who somehow tricked everyone on the show into adoring him despite some outrageously bad on-set behavior during the show’s first season. Simon would rather never have to see Charlie again, but reluctantly agrees to stage a very public friendship during the short time before he moves. When Charlie has to leave town to deal with a family emergency, this means Simon comes along. Their road trip brings Simon to places he would never have willingly chosen to visit—and he finds he’s actually not having a terrible time.
The more he gets to know Charlie, the more Simon suspects he’s underestimated his former coworker. Simon also realizes that after seven years, Charlie might know him better than anyone ever has. Even stranger, Charlie seems to be starting to actually like him, despite knowing him so well. Still, Simon is about to move three thousand miles away, so whatever’s starting between him and Charlie can’t really amount to anything... right?
Tropes:
Enemies to Lovers
Opposites Attract
Forced Proximity
Slow Burn
Customer Reviews
Another tremendous winner by Sebastian
I’m an unrepentant cheerleader for Cat Sebastian’s books, but this one may well take over the top spot amongst my favorites. This is _so_ much more than an ‘enemies to lovers’ romance - or, I suppose, it’s what all of those other books were trying and failing to be.
Simon and Charlie are such fully realized characters that I completely forgot that they weren’t real people. And Simon’s difficulties with anxiety, OCD, and maladaptive coping strategies? Yeah - this book has given me useful insights to bring to at least two therapy sessions.
Plus, the secondary characters are beautifully drawn in. I can absolutely see Lian, Jaime, and Alex in an LA restaurant somewhere. Or Nora getting brunch with her uncles on a trip to the city.
I can’t recommend it highly enough - definitely a fantastic expansion of Sebastian’s earlier works of historical fiction!
Exhausting
A quarter of the way through, I lost any compassion for the characters. The characters become caricatures of mental health disorders. Perhaps this would have worked as a novella, but the tedium and repetitiveness becomes exhausting after a while.