Beyond the Stars by Stacey Wise

Item: Beyond the Stars
Rating: 3.5
Author: Sparkles

February 14, 2016 Sparkles Book Review 0 ★★★½

Beyond the Stars by Stacey Wise
Published by Entangled Publishing on February 8th 2016
Genres: New Adult
Pages: 336
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Most girls would kill for the opportunity to work for Jack McAlister, Hollywood's hottest actor, but twenty-one-year-old Jessica Beckett is ready to kick him out of her red Ford Fiesta and never look back. She should be spending her junior year in France, eating pastries and sharpening her foreign language skills. Instead she's reluctantly working as Jack's personal assistant, thanks to her powerhouse talent agent aunt.

Jack is private, prickly, and downright condescending. Jessica pushes his buttons—she's not the type of girl to swoon over celebrity heartthrobs, precisely why her aunt thought she'd be perfect for the job—and Jack pushes right back.

But as she begins to peel away his layers, Jessica is shocked to find she craves her boss's easy smile and sexy blue eyes. The problem is, so does the entire female population. And what started out as the job from hell soon has Jess wondering if a guy like Jack could ever find love with a regular girl like her.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book.

I’m not sure if NA Chick-Lit is a thing for real, but that defines exactly the kind of book Beyond the Stars is.

Jess is taking a year off college when she is forced to miss the trip studying abroad she had planned, and her aunt offers her a job as some A-lister star assistant. Seeing as she needs a job to pay for her part of the rent of the apartment she shares with her best friend, she takes the job… after all how hard could it be?

Jack is the hottest man alive (according to several magazines) and is very set on not having an assistant, his privacy keeps being invaded enough as it is, he doesn’t need another person in his house posting about his life and everything he does.

He will soon find out that Jess is not the typical girl, and she doesn’t seem to be wowed by his famous persona, he finds this kind of refreshing and he starts to very, very slowly lower his walls and trust her.

Jess, for her part, at first finds Jack to be a complete jerk. It’ll take some time for her to start seeing another side of him and for the attraction she feels (he is the hottest man alive after all) to morph into deeper feelings.

Beyond the Stars is the definition of a slow burn romance… as in there’s one nice kiss around 60% maybe… and they don’t get together until like 90% of the book, there was definitely a bit of steam to those make-out sessions but nothing to really see… if you know what I mean.
Definitely a sweet story, it’s told solely from Jess’ PoV until the great epilogue, which is the only sneak peek we get into Jack’s mind (question: if author’s can write a bit from the guy’s PoV for the ending, why don’t they do a few more during the story?? I would have loved to get a read on Jack’s thoughts during some parts of the book.)

There’s a bit more to the story in general as we get to know Jack’s life, his story, Jess’ life and their relationships with their peers. I won’t lie, at times I wanted the other stuff to just fast forward until something happened between them, but at the same time it didn’t feel like it dragged on too much.

I greatly enjoyed watching Jess and Jack falling for each other… I almost didn’t mind the lack of action 😉

Sparkles’ Rating: 3.5 sweet slow-burning Stars