Cat Cranwell is an online influencer who is unceremoniously cancelled when the new social network she’s promoting is found to be selling data.

My first impression of Cat was shallow.

My second impression was that she was clever enough to know she really should read a contract before signing it … but not clever enough to stand up for herself and insist that she (or her lawyer) actually read the contract. I almost stopped reading at this point. In fact, I did stop reading, only to return to the book several months later.

Anyway, Cat’s uncle invites her to his small town in Montanna, where he has a job she can do while she waits for the hullabaloo to die down. He’s the head Park Ranger for Kannery National Park, and hires Cat to reenergise their social media profiles and marketing in general.

So Cat catches a flight to the middle of nowhere, taking more suitcases than she should reasonably have been allowed to check in. (Who needs six suitcases to go anywhere?) She meets her uncle’s quirky colleagues, including the elusive Zaiah Smith.

Famous for a Living had the same city-girl-meets-country-boy grumpy sunshine plot and overall vibe as Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other. Brynn and Sebastian’s story had them both as point of view characters, while Cat’s story is told entirely in first person from her point of view.

I found that a little hard going … and I say that as someone who usually loves first person.

I think my problem was that I found Cat annoying and unlikeable for the first third of the book. She mellowed slightly in the middle third and was quite likeable by the end (although I still don’t see what Zaiah saw in her, or vice versa).

The cover gives off definite rom-com vibes, and there were some funny lines and even funny scenes. The writing was good and occasionally great, although there were a few times I had to backtrack because it felt like I’d missed something important (like Zaiah giving any indication he was romantically interested in Cat. Or vice versa). As such, the story was definitely more com than rom.

The story did make some solid points about social media use and addiction.

However, I would have liked to have seen that spread more evenly throughout the story. I guess it could be argued that the whole story was a warning against social media addiction, but that wasn’t the impression I got.

Famous for a Living is categorised as Christian fiction, and I kept waiting for Cat–or Zaiah, or anyone–to show some kind of Christian message (like how we, as Christians, should look to God rather than social media for love). But it never came. Yes, I guess it was a clean and wholesome romance, but I would have liked to have seen more of a faith element, and much more of a romance.

If you enjoy rom-coms from authors like Bethany Turner, then you may enjoy Famous for a Living.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

About Melissa Ferguson

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About Famous for a Living

She’s Insta-famous. He uses a flip phone.

When her business partner is accused of serious financial crimes, superstar influencer Cat Cranwell—an engineered marvel of beauty, energy, and fun—falls from her penthouse perch. Des­perate to get away from the online trolls and paparazzi docu­menting her disgrace, Cat accepts her uncle’s offer to work with him in Kannery National Park, Montana. About as far as possible from life as she’s known it.

Cat’s world shifts from the swirling haze of likes and comments to lit­eral blizzards of frostbite temperatures and waist-deep snow. In place of negotiating brand deals, she finds herself negotiating at the ledge of a frozen lake with her die-hard Polar Bear Plunge coworkers. Instead of padding through the marble kitchen of her Manhattan loft, she’s sharing a tent-sized cabin with a roommate eager to bond like characters in sitcoms. But something curious is also happening in this overwhelming breath of fresh air as she reacquaints with the most honest parts of her­self and begins to ask the hard questions. Can Cat love herself with, and without, the world watching?

Then there’s that other tiny problem—she’s falling for Zaiah, the ruggedly handsome park ranger—and he hates anything remotely connected to social media, quite possibly her included.

Written with bestselling author Melissa Ferguson’s signature wit and charm, this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy of opposites attract is full of hilarious romp and a romance that will melt readers’ hearts.

Find Famous for a Living online at:

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