Bingo square: Arts
The MMC is an art professor and a painter. The FMC is a musician.
Evan Winslow is an art professor at a liberal arts college in Dane, Iowa. After his father is exposed as an art fraud just as Evan was starting out as a painter, Evan fights to regain a scrap of respectability in the art world. He is a talented painter, but does not paint as he fears inviting comparisons between his father’s shady business and his own art.
Despite his self-doubt, a casual remark at a wedding years prior left a permanent mark on Emerson Quinn. Emerson, an up-and-coming musician with loads of ambition but no success outside of her small town, dreams of being a pop star. Evan tells her he believes in her and that she should go for it.
In the years since, Emerson rose to the top of the pop charts. She is world famous, but doubts herself, especially when her label wants her to steer away from her sharp, incisive lyrics, and produce more danceable pop hits.
What she needs is to is get away from LA and the paparazzi so she can write her new album without any distractions. So, with the help of her best friend and publicist, Emerson looks up Evan’s whereabouts, and shows up on his front step with a suitcase and a guitar.
Evan remembers Emerson, but only as the cute girl from the wedding. She tells him she’s a songwriter and that he is the first person who ever truly believed in her. And that she wants to stay with him for a few weeks while she writes her album.
Baffled, Evan tells her no. But he acquiesces and lets her stay with him for a couple of days while she looks for more permanent housing.
This kicks off a series of shenanigans where Emerson dons a disguise, dyes her blond hair black, eschews her trademark red lipstick, and quickly integrates herself into Evan’s life.
On the surface, this is a cute romcom. However, since it does not take place in an alternative universe where Emerson Quinn is a nobody and no one reads social media or stalks celebrities, then it is too farfetched for me to enjoy.
The characters and setting are likeable enough, but the ridiculousness of the situation distracts from the romance.
The rest of this review contains mild spoilers.
First of all, I’m fine with this being a Taylor Swift fanfiction. I’m fine with Evan letting some rando he met once years ago move into his massive, yet unairconditioned, home in Iowa (corn sweat anyone?), so that she can write an album. But my suspension of disbelief fails me when the author wants me to believe that if Taylor Swift donned a baggy t-shirt from Wal-Mart, dyed her hair, and wore a sunhat, no one in a university town would recognize her. Also, since said home is unairconditioned, anyone could walk or drive by the house and hear someone who looked vaguely like a celebrity pop star sitting on the front porch singing and playing her guitar while wearing teeny tiny PJs (because of the heat).
Second of all, Emerson volunteers with Evan at an afterschool arts program for teenagers. She coaches a quiet boy to write and perform his own songs, and travels with him to various music contests. Again, aside from a few wary looks, no one recognizes her. I skipped most of these interactions as pretending that Emerson could coach a kid twice a week without any of his other teenage friends noticing who she was is wildly annoying to me for some reason.
Third, when someone does recognize Emerson, Evan kisses her to hide her face and explains that his “girlfriend” is mistaken for Emerson Quinn all the time. This happens at the twenty-five percent mark in the book and nothing happens after it. It is never mentioned again, like this is a totally normal thing for Evan’s character to do.
Now that I’ve written it out, very few of Evan’s actions make sense. For someone who wants to avoid a scandal at all costs, his sense of self-preservation is poor.
I read the next book, Infamous, about a different rock star in the same universe and enjoyed it more. That book was more to my taste, and it contained fewer preposterous scenarios than Famous does.