Casting Lacey, by Elle Spencer

This is a hard review to write.

Elle Spencer's Casting Lacey is an excellent contemporary f/f romance in many, many ways. The plot: Quinn is a closeted major network star who, following her divorce, has been searching for a way to come out of the closet. She wants to live openly and be able to date, but she's worried about the impact the news might have on her career and even more worried about the loss of control that comes with the media prying into her life in the aftermath. (An important background detail is that Quinn had a stalker not too long ago and woke up to find him in her bedroom taking pictures of her while she slept: she has some understandable issues about having her own space, physically and mentally.) Her endearing publicist, Jack, suggests a slow-build fake romance, In the Way That You Do: this will put someone by Quinn's side when she comes out, allow them to control the revelation and handle it gradually, and do it all without subjecting an actual fledgling romance to the pressures of coming out of the closet. This makes about as much sense as any fake romance setup, honestly, so I think it's believable in that pinch-of-salt way we use for tropey premises.

Her publicist's choice of fake girlfriend is Lacey, a former soap star who is already openly gay. Lacey grew up on TV, starting on her soap as a child and playing her character almost her whole life, until she came out to her producers and... got written out of the show not long afterwards. Which also caused her girlfriend to break up with her. She's jaded, cynical, angry, and heartbroken, but she also hasn't worked in a year and she needs the money, so--with reservations--she agrees to the proposal.

Sparks fly between the two almost immediately, but they're also clashing a lot. But when a mountain bike accident breaks Quinn's wrist, Lacey winds up moving into the main house to take care of her, and friendship and intimacy develops between them in a nice, believable, gradual way alongside the simmering attraction and the nice h/c details. (There is some quality h/c in this book. Quinn's wrist + Lacey later getting sick!) They come up with a plan to have Quinn's legal show write in her broken wrist, so that her character, Jordan, is injured and requires the help of a first-year lawyer, Selena (to be played by Lacey). They intend to make their on-camera interactions just flirty enough and chemistry-filled enough that the writers will think it's their idea to start writing a Jordan/Selena romance into the scripts, and this eventually works, giving them a slightly-parallel fictional romance alongside their real one and allowing them to have fake sex scenes full of barely sublimated lust. It's pretty hot.

Meanwhile, each is convinced she's the only one pining, and matters are complicated when Lacey's ex-girlfriend re-enters the picture.

Eventually and after a lot of struggle and conflict, they grapple with their insecurities and come out ahead, happy, and in love. The prose is good, the banter is genuinely funny, and the characterization of both is nicely complex; while the setup is tropey, a good bit of what keeps them apart is real, personal, and organic, and Spencer explores it well and without overplaying the happy ending. I feel confident in these two, but not unrealistically so--more that I'm sure they'll both continue to grow as people and, although sometimes with difficulty, continue giving each other more chances when there are inevitable fuckups. It's nice. So on the one hand, highly-recommended. Layered novel-length f/f with strong chemistry, good conflict, hot sex, swoony romance, and fake dating!

On the other hand: Lacey's ex-girlfriend.

I think Spencer makes an effort to treat this character with some of the sympathy she has for the rest of the cast--early on, Lacey repeatedly tells Quinn that Quinn is being too hard on Dani (the ex) for breaking up with Lacey in the aftermath of Lacey being fired, that money is a reason a lot of couples split up, that Dani had a hard time with her conservative parents not accepting her, that it was a tense situation; later, Lacey says that Dani is just immature and that she's sure she'll eventually grow up into a person who will do the world a lot of good. Both reasonably nice and nuanced moments. But in between--what the fuck?

Spoilers for something irritating will follow.

There are two problems with Dani, basically. One is that once we see her, she's incredibly cartoonish, all va-va-voom good looks and possessive sexiness, and... right away not only saying that she knows she still has Lacey's heart but also that Lacey is the future mother of her children (...is this a thing? I feel like this is something you would hear from a turn-of-the-century robber baron, not a twenty-something lesbian in New York in the 2010s). She confidently proclaims, at Lacey's father's funeral, that Lacey is her fiancee, despite the fact that she hasn't actually asked Lacey about this yet--and when she does, it's in Times Square shortly after said funeral. Then it turns out that she found Lacey's contract with Quinn (while going through Lacey's suitcase while Lacey was out of the room, because again, she was pulled off the "Psycho Ex" shelf at "Stereotypes-R-Us"), and when Lacey doesn't get back together with her, she tries to blackmail them, threatening to go public with the info of Quinn's fake relationship--which has Won America's Heart--which will ruin her reputation. It's like everything is reasonably nuanced and then Dani is the Tasmanian Devil spinning wildly through it all, and not in a way that's interesting.

...And she's the only notable character of color in the book. Specifically, she's Latina, with a "Sofia Vergara" accent. This is... not great, because not only is she a cartoon who doesn't get much depth or sympathy but she's a cartoon who doesn't get much depth or sympathy and who coincides in uneasy ways with a whole bunch of stereotypes. And she's a major part of the plot--entirely as an obstacle, but still--and so it's hard to read around her. So a flimsy, OTT antagonist who doesn't gel with the tone of the rest of the book and who comes with a side-dose of racial stereotypes--a pretty significant drawback.

So the parts of this book that are good are often delightfully good, but the part that is bad is really distracting, could be genuinely distressing, and certainly mars the overall quality of the book for me. It's a very unfortunate caveat.