Last year I had the pleasure of reading Someone Else’s Fairytale by Emily Mah Tippetts – a New Adult novel of a college student who meets and is courted by an incredibly handsome and successful movie star. I was delighted to be offered the opportunity to read and review the second book in the series, Nobody’s Damsel. This book continues on from the first one and the characters are a little older now and don’t quite fall under the category of New Adult but I thought it was a great book and want to share it with my readers.

Title: Nobody’s Damsel (Someone Else’s Fairytale #2)
Author: Emily Mah Tippets
Genre: contemporary, romance, chick lit
Publisher: self published
Publication Date: January 5th 2013
Pages: 288 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Sample chapter of Nobody’s Damsel can be found: here

Synopsis (from goodreads):
Chloe has finished her masters degree and taken a job as a forensic scientist back in her home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico, only the press will not leave her alone. They follow her to crime scenes and report on her every move, eager to show that her marriage to Hollywood A-lister, Jason Vanderholt, is on the brink of collapse. Millions of fans who dream of their own celebrity romance with him want this more than anything. This scrutiny comes at a particularly bad time as Chloe’s first case is a crime against a child roughly the same age that Chloe was when she survived a homicide attempt.

Now that she sees the case from an adult’s perspective, she realizes it’s much harder than she ever dreamed. It’s even worse for Jason, who is two steps removed from the crime. He must watch and try to support his wife as she battles with past demons and tries to keep up with a nameless suspect who evades identification and capture. Never has Jason been more frustrated with his job, its frivolities, and its lack of connection to the real world. When he storms off the set of his latest movie, the press goes wild with conjecture. Perhaps he never was anything more than a pretty face after all.

Together, Chloe and Jason must find their way past all the popping flashbulbs and through the dark maze of the criminal investigation to discover whether they can balance their professional goals with the demands of a celebrity marriage. The odds are entirely against them.

My Review:

Chloe is now in her dream occupation – a forensic scientist working crime scenes for the police. But with her career comes stress and Chloe has enough of that having to run from snap happy photographers who capture her every move. Jason is busy with his own job and the drama that comes from being a Hollywood heart-throb.

When the case Chloe is working on brings up memories she’d rather forget and emotions threaten to get in the way of finding the one responsible for a child’s abduction and the added stress of Jason’s ex back in the picture, it seems there’s more to the fairytale than first meets the eye.

Whilst I loved the happy ending of Someone Else’s Fairytale, I could not have been happier for the somewhat troubled beginning of Noone’s Damsel. The course of true love never did run smooth and that can definitely be said for the characters of Chloe and Jason. Marriage doesn’t necessity mean happily ever after. The heroes and heroines of fairytales didn’t have stalking paparazzi and tabloids trying to cause drama in their relationships. A problem I have in some novels is that after all the pain and mess a couple goes though to get together, the author then lets them off the hook and everything’s clear sailing from then on. Not the case with this particular couple. They have issues, fights and trouble. I thought the realism that this added was fantastic and only made me like Chloe more than I did previously.

Where in the first novel I was focused on the romantic relationship between Chloe and Jason, this book had me more interested in Chloe’s job as a forensic scientist.  I found it fascinating the relationships between the police and the crime scene investigators. The romance is still there it’s just not the sole focus of the story.

The secondary characters are great in their roles – I was especially glad to see Kyra popping up again. They added to the plot and I liked to see how Chloe’s relationships with the Van der Volts and her sister has developed.

This novel was a pleasure to read. The writing was well researched. The plot was well though out but still had a few twists. I loved how realistic Tippetts had made the relationship of a Hollywood superstar with a lab geek – both the romance and the demands of their chosen careers. The tribute at the end of the book was heartfelt and beautiful. I can’t wait to read the next instalment of Chloe and Jason’s lives together.

Thanks to Emily Mah Tippets for the review copy.

Purchase the novel from:

Amazon US Kindle
Amazon US Paperback
Amazon UK Kindle
Amazon UK Paperback
Amazon Canada
Amazon Germany
Amazon Italy
Amazon Spain

Kobo

Smashwords

Also by Emily Mah Tippetts:

 Someone Else’s Fairytale (Someone Else’s Fairytale #1)