A very relaxed and enjoyable read about a young man who is lucky enough to find the woman of his dreams and then lets her slip away into the hands of a Hollywood superstar. He finally rights himself and then muffs a second possible love connection with another great girl only to have hope return for girl number one when fortune seems to smile on him with complications in her relationship with her Hollywood stud. Any person who has second thoughts after breaking up with a really nice man or woman (if they later regretted it) will identify with this book. The book is smart, funny and and reading it feels like putting on your favorite pair of comfortable old shoes. I really loved this book. Pleasurable and effortless! ( )

Having received this story as a Goodreads First Reads Giveaway novel, I found Leading Man to be a rather charming story about Max, a reporter at a prestigious magazine who falls in love with Samantha, his first high school sweetheart. When Samantha meets Johnny Mars, a famous actor, and joins the celebrity world, Max continues his unrequited love for Samantha throughout the ensuing years.
This story interested me from two perspectives. Because I know someone who is similar to Max in being unable to make a commitment to one special woman, I was curious about Max’s character and how the story would play out. Additionally, because the story presented insight into celebrity and the movie-making culture, I was intrigued by the concept of fame and how the media industries cultivate that concept.
Aside from that, I don’t think that the writing was incredibly engaging, and I somehow thought that the author could have drawn the reader further into the story by developing Max and Samantha’s characters even more.
Reading Leading Man was kind of like reading a cozy mystery, with limited suspense or allure, but nevertheless, providing the reader with a satisfactory experience. ( )

Names will be dropped tonight.

Light-ish first person, first novel of a celebrity news writer who gets further from his sweetheart-from-childhood as he comes closer to the rich & famous who are his bread and butter. So, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, moves to L.A., gets bigger stories and wonders why he's still alone. Then he figures it out and writes this book. Not to be cruel, I read most of it, but even though I can be a celeb news junkie, I was not very interested in figuring out who was who in this fairly obvious autobiographical roman à clef (bad at blind items). I did like the character Alistair Lyon who shows up periodically to check the narrator's progress (Daniel Day-Lewis? Ian McKellen? Peter O'Toole?). Some heavy duty blurbing from previous colleagues (Gillian Flynn, Kurt Andersen). Next novel should be more interesting. {Pre-publication review copy via Nook download} ( )

completed 10/3/14 ( )