Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: Touch Up
SERIES: Rose & Thorns #2
AUTHOR: Katey Hawthorne and J.A. Rock
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 224 pages
RELEASE DATE: October 15, 2018
BLURB:
Last year, twenty-three-year-old actress Dina Gilbert snagged the lead in the summer’s biggest blockbuster. It wasn’t easy: she’s black, openly queer, and has actual curves she refuses to let people Photoshop. Now, overwhelmed by sudden fame and homesick for Georgia, she’s becoming someone she doesn’t recognize. Maybe that’s why she’s out partying her face off most nights.
Enter Colleen Thomas, an ex-model turned photo editor whose issues with her own body are only surpassed by her issues with other peoples’. Colleen knows the rules but Photoshops Dina’s magazine cover anyway, incurring the wrath of Dina and her fans. And, okay, maybe that cover image was unbelievably sexy even before Colleen’s alterations. So what? Dina’s not fooling anyone with that girl-next-door, I-eat-Snickers-in-my-Golden-Globes-dress BS. Colleen knows a train wreck when she sees one.
Tensions rise even more when Colleen and Dina have to work together at the Rose Social Club’s annual charity gala. When they realize they have something in common, no one is more surprised than they are. The sexual chemistry doesn’t hurt either. Their differences could either be a source of strength—a life raft in the heaving waters of Hollywood—or the makings of a titanic crash.
REVIEW:
If you’ve read any of my reviews before this one, you know that I love complicated women. Messy women, flawed women, women who make mistakes. But often, in romance, those complicated women come together to create something soft and sweet and light, relinquishing everything that made them interesting in the name of love. That is so not the case with Dina and Colleen in this book. These two are a hot mess, and even as they start to fall hard for each other, they know love cannot heal all wounds.
Dina Gilbert is the young star of a hit YA film franchise that has catapulted her to unimaginable fame. She’s curvy and proud of it, but when ex-model and current photo editor Colleen Thomas retouches a cover photo of Dina to slim her down, Dina is livid. She and Colleen immediately butt heads—Dina can’t stand Colleen’s shallow opinions of beauty, and Colleen is so over Dina’s childish outlook on fame and fortune. But through gritted apologies, they begin to understand each other a little more, and sparks start flying.
I’m absolutely in love with the sex scenes in this book. Like, wow, they are total fire, but they’re also hilariously realistic. So few F/F romances go deeper into what female bodies actually do during good sex—the noises, the fluids, the sticky aftermath. It’s so wonderfully intimate and well-written. I think any modern woman can relate to Dina’s impressive sex toy collection or the feeling of waking up after some self-loving and feeling like you’ve been run over by a truck. Women who love women aren’t grossed out or put off by those details—we adore them. And these authors totally nailed it.
It would be too easy to call either character unlikable. Colleen is a product of bad parenting and parasitic industry—she’s impossibly shallow, sharp, and not afraid to point out flaws that you’d rather keep hidden. But as a half-Asian woman within a cutthroat industry, her survival hinged on being aloof, and it never came at a low cost. She’s hard because she refused to be swallowed whole. But after meeting Dina and seeing how the industry will eat you alive either way, she has to take a step back and see if this is really how she wants to live the rest of her life. It took me a while to like Colleen. I’m a curvy girl myself, so I could never be with a woman who sought to slim me down. But Colleen’s fatphobia and body consciousness is rooted in something deep and dark, and it really has nothing to do with how she actually feels about Dina.
Dina herself is an excellent picture of young, modern Hollywood women who really do have to have it all to be considered admirable. I can definitely see how she was influenced by stars like Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Stone who bank on being your quirky BFF even when they’re winning Oscars and making millions of dollars. And Dina is also a black woman, so she’s trying to win the uphill battle of being admired by everyone, from the industry execs to her family back home in Georgia. So when she breaks down, she breaks down hard, and it’s like watching a car crash.
If you’re looking for your next light, fluffy read, this one isn’t it. It’s tough and complex. The characters say cruel, hurtful things to each other to mask their own pain, and forgiveness never comes easily. It requires you to take pity and sympathize with women commonly written off as bitches in other forms of media. But the love between Dina and Colleen is so wonderfully rewarding by the end, and they feel like two real woman who exist today.
RATING: 
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