Take Two, Birdie Maxwell - Softcover

Scotch, Allison Winn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593546555 ISBN 13: 9780593546550

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

Hollywood’s biggest rom-com star tries to recover from her damaged reputation by staging her own rom-com and following a lead on a lost love.
 
Birdie Robinson thought she’d gotten everything she wanted out of life: fame, adoration, and an A-list Hollywood career. But after an on-set feud goes viral, she leaves L.A. for the one place where no one would think to find her: her hometown. She’s startled to stumble upon a love letter from a former boyfriend asking for a second chance. And there’s just one issue: the letter was unsigned and she’s not sure which ex sent it. Still, a public reunion with an ex-boyfriend could turn the wave of public opinion back in her favor. Life imitating art. What could go wrong? 
 
Elliot O’Brien, star reporter, knows that life isn’t an actual rom-com. Case in point, he’s spent two decades repressing his long-simmering feelings for his twin sister’s best friend, Birdie. But with his journalism career cratering and Birdie back in their hometown at the same time he is, he realizes that chronicling her search for her long-ago ex may be his opportunity to right some wrongs.
 
As they hit the road in an ancient RV, Birdie and Elliot retrace her romantic history for clues to who wrote the letter and come face to face with their own romantic missteps, all while grappling with whether happy endings are found only on the big screen—or whether their own happier ever after could be closer than they both ever imagined. 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Allison Winn Scotch is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing, In Twenty Years, and Time of My Life. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and their two rescue dogs, Hugo and Mr. Peanut.

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1

BIRDIE

Birdie Robinson arrived on her childhood street much like she had left: unceremoniously, with little fanfare, and certainly with no red carpet. She dropped her leather duffel, stuffed only with clothes designed for a wellness retreat (she had in fact packed for a wellness retreat), and spun toward the stop sign on the corner. But her driver and his Escalade were long out of view, and she suspected sending him away was the first of many regrets she'd have about coming home. She dipped her head back and stared up toward the cloud-covered night sky. The air smelled just as she remembered her hometown's night air smelling: like threatening snow, like chopped firewood, but also like the neighbors had left out rotting garbage. Barton was complicated in that way, and certainly, it was complicated for Birdie.

She squeezed her eyes shut and groaned aloud. She hadn't meant to end up here, both in this moment and, well, ever again. She had fled New York earlier that morning, having booked a last-minute trip to the private, exclusive spa outside Los Angeles, the privacy being the most critical criterion for her choice. But as she ran from the paparazzi who greeted her at LAX and threw herself into the waiting car, she found herself directing the driver here. To Barton. A speck in the middle of California. She hadn't been home in four years, hadn't thought to call her father and stepmother, hadn't thought to text her younger sister, Andie, or DM her best friend, Mona, whose house Birdie could see from her spot on the sidewalk if she were to open her eyes.

So now she was moored to the sidewalk in front of her parents' bilevel home as the temperature dipped into the thirties, dressed in a caftan meant for a day spa, and talking herself into ringing the doorbell.

She heard her phone vibrate in her bag. Sydney, her agent, or Imani, her publicist. She should tell them she bolted, that she would miss their lunch tomorrow at the spa to "remaneuver" their next steps. That was Imani's word. "Well, the apology video didn't go exactly as planned, so let's meet up and discuss a remaneuver." Birdie was relieved Imani had found a new word for it. She'd heard her publicist say pivot at least several hundred times in the past few weeks, and it was all Birdie could do to stop herself from proposing a drinking game. Every time Imani says pivot, we take a shot.

Needless to say, she'd be hospitalized for alcohol poisoning.

Birdie was tired of the news alerts on her phone blaring about the downfall of America's Sweetheart. She was tired of being a piñata for gossip sites, tired of getting dragged over hot coals because she couldn't take Sebastian Carol's on-set bad behavior for even one more second, which was the only reason she threw a fit in the first place. Sebastian Carol, of the famed Carol brothers duo, spawn of the famous director Milo Carol, was known to be handsy. He was known to leer at breasts and to entice actresses back to his trailer, all under the guise of bolstered parts, better lighting, future roles in blockbusters. Birdie knew this when she signed on. She also knew that Sebastian was complicated for her for plenty of other reasons: namely, the long-secret and very doomed relationship she'd had for five years with his brother. But the studio insisted on Sebastian for the sequel to Birdie's biggest box office hit. Frankly, the industry's biggest rom-com box office hit of the decade. The only thing that trumped Birdie's star power was the Carol brothers' star power, so she said yes. And then, when she watched him massaging one more day player's shoulders, she lost it.

How was she to know that someone was filming? How was she to know that while she was defending the honor of women everywhere, the public would choose to side with Sebastian? (This she really should have known.) How was she to know that the day player might give an interview to TMZ saying it was a perfectly innocuous massage? Or that Sebastian would threaten to quit if Birdie wasn't fired. Since Love Grenade couldn't work without Birdie or without Sebastian (according to the studio), they shuttered the film entirely. Rumors grew into legend and legends became truths, and soon, so, so quickly, Birdie Robinson, star extraordinaire, was hurtling toward her downfall. A dickhead director and a misogynistic media and a publicist who couldn't stop saying pivot: a toxic unexpected combination that led Birdie to the rash decision to flee to Barton after so many years away.

Birdie steeled herself again to ring the doorbell. She could probably swipe the key that was always under the doormat, because Barton was not the type of place where you worried about your neighbors stealing keys and then stealing your television, but she didn't want to startle her parents. Walking in unannounced after four years. Her father and Susana were professors at the state university about twenty miles south. Two brainy peas in a pod, Susana used to say, and Birdie, too young to understand that she didn't mean this literally, always envisioned them as green and round and pressing up against each other, which at the time she found disgusting. Birdie didn't want to stride in the door after so much time away and find them naked, which had happened when she was thirteen after she told them she was sleeping over at Mona and Elliot's-Mona's twin brother-three houses down, but forgot her toothbrush and returned home to retrieve it.

So the doorbell it was.

She bounced her head and talked herself up the stoop. Birdie the actor could talk herself into anything, become just about anyone. It was the only thing she was truly excellent at in life: assuming a role and inhabiting it until the director yelled cut. Sometimes long after that too. So now, how difficult could it be? It had to be better than being chased by photographers whenever she left her loft in Tribeca for the past three weeks. It had to be better than reading about the rumors that Page Six was inventing that were more fictional than half the scripts she read. Birdie Robinson hates her neighbor's pugs! Birdie Robinson doesn't tip her barista! Birdie Robinson is America's Sweetheart no longer! For the record, Birdie loved pugs, tipped well, and, if Sydney and Imani had anything to do with it, would be America's Sweetheart until she hit menopause, possibly longer, because then they'd issue a press release about ageism and shame the audience until they relented. Pivot. Birdie truly loathed the word, but it was hard not to admit that her team was good at it, right up until they were fucking awful at it. She knew the apology video was a mistake. She knew she didn't sound sincere, couldn't bring herself to sound sincere, but Imani snapped her fingers and told her it was handled. She trusted them that it was. It was not.

Birdie's hand was shaking as she pressed her finger to the doorbell. She heard it chime in the house and waited for the thunder of footsteps, imagining her father, probably in some professorial tweed blazer, swinging it open and bear-hugging her in delight. She tilted her ear toward the door. She heard no thundering footsteps.

Birdie would explain that she just needed a place to hide out for a week, until everyone realized that they'd gotten the whole situation wrong.

She pressed the doorbell again.

Finally, there were footsteps behind the door, and then Birdie heard the bolt unlock, then the latch. She calmed and told herself that of course she could return home after so long. Of course everyone would be more or less mostly happy to see her.

The door swung open, and it took Birdie at least two solid seconds to see that it was not her father and not Susana in front of her. It was her sister, Andie, who had a pageboy haircut that rendered her unrecognizable from the last time Birdie had seen her, but still made her no less beautiful. The type of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593546555
• ISBN 13: 9780593546550
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland