Book Review for The Hollywood Assistant by May Cobb

 The Hollywood Assistant by May Cobb

Published on  July 9, 2024 by Berkley

Genre:  Mystery Thriller

Taken from Goodreads:  Offered a dream job in Hollywood with a famous director and his actress wife, an insecure woman becomes their personal assistant where their secrets and lies place her in the crosshairs of a murder investigation.

Cassidy Foster is heartbroken, stuck in life, and getting a little too obsessed with plants. Then when a well-connected friend becomes sick of Cassidy’s moping and gets her a gig with famous Hollywood couple, Marisol and Nate Sterling, Cassidy jumps at the chance to move to sunny L.A. The Sterlings are warm and welcoming. A perfect couple. All Cassidy has to do is be available a few hours a week for errands. In return, she has access to luxury. Designer clothes. A sparkling pool. Great pay. When Nate takes interest in her, asking her to read scripts he’s written, Cassidy thinks this could be the key to kickstarting her writing dreams. As their business relationship grows, so does their attraction. Nate is sexy, talented, and Cassidy can’t believe her luck. Clearly, Marisol doesn’t know what she has. Maybe that’s why the two are always fighting when they think Cassidy isn’t around. But Cassidy learns she was hired for a different purpose. The Sterlings aren’t the perfect couple. Marisol isn’t the perfect wife. And when one of them is found dead, Cassidy becomes the perfect suspect.

 

My Thoughts:   May Cobb wrote a book that I did not want to put down and am sad to have finished it.  I was so invested in Cassidy Foster that I want more of her. 

The Hollywood Assistant had some heat and a lot of drama.   The beginning was a little slow for me, but it did give me the chance to get to know the main characters better.  I like that the reader got to see inside the characters’ lives and learn more about them, but I did question if we were seeing the true character or just what they wanted us to see.  Obviously, we only see what they want us to see.  As the story picked up, I found myself anticipating reading it and thinking about the story when I was not reading. 

May Cobb is a must-read author and I look forward to the next book that she is working on.  

Thank you Berkley for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

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Meet May Cobb (taken fromher website):  I grew up in the piney woods of East Texas where my thrillers A LIKEABLE WOMAN, MY SUMMER DARLINGS, THE HUNTING WIVES and BIG WOODS are set. After college, I moved to San Francisco where I studied Victorian Literature for my Masters, and gravitated towards that era’s detective novels, known as “sensation novels”, such as Wilke Collins’ THE WOMAN IN WHITE. I then lived in Los Angeles for a few years where I worked for writer/director Ron Shelton and his wife, the actor Lolita Davidovich.

I currently live in Austin, Texas, with my husband and son where we enjoy traipsing around the area’s many beautiful parks. I also enjoy napping, staring into space, making to-do lists for my to-do lists, shoveling cookies down my throat when I’m writing a particularly difficult scene (and even when I’m not), wearing my PJ’s as often as I can get away with and collapsing into bed at the end of a day with a great book.

I’m currently finishing a book about the late, jazz great, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a project which has been in the works for twenty years. Kirk was a human phenomenon—a multi-instrumentalist who was best known for his miraculous ability to play three saxophones simultaneously. During his brief life, he defied staggering odds—from blindness, to prejudice, to a paralyzing stroke—in order to play the music that came to him through dreams. His story is what made me want to become a writer.

My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, Austin Monthly, and Texas Highways Magazine.

My proudest achievement remains clinching 1st place in the UIL competition for Personal Writing when I was in the 4th grade.

 

Chcck out other books by May Cobb that I have reviewed:

A Likeable Woman by May Cobb

                                                             My Summer Darlings by May Cobb