Chloe has finished her masters degree and taken a job as a forensic scientist back in her home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico, only the press will not leave her alone. They follow her to crime scenes and report on her every move, eager to show that her marriage to Hollywood A-lister, Jason Vanderholt, is on the brink of collapse. Millions of fans who dream of their own celebrity romance with him want this more than anything. This scrutiny comes at a particularly bad time as Chloe's first case is a crime against a child roughly the same age that Chloe was when she survived a homicide attempt.
Now that she sees the case from an adult's perspective, she realizes it's much harder than she ever dreamed. It's even worse for Jason, who is two steps removed from the crime. He must watch and try to support his wife as she battles with past demons and tries to keep up with a nameless suspect who evades identification and capture. Never has Jason been more frustrated with his job, its frivolities, and its lack of connection to the real world. When he storms off the set of his latest movie, the press goes wild with conjecture. Perhaps he never was anything more than a pretty face after all.
Together, Chloe and Jason must find their way past all the popping flashbulbs and through the dark maze of the criminal investigation to discover whether they can balance their professional goals with the demands of a celebrity marriage. The odds are entirely against them. ~~ synopsis from Goodreads
My thoughts about Nobody's Damsel ~~
Nobody's Damsel is book #2 in the
Someone Else's Fairytale series. I read book #1 in March and loved the story. You can read my thoughts
here. And if I can be honest, I think I love #2 even more!
Someone Else's Fairytale has our 2 main characters meeting and trying to figure out if they can be together or not. They come from places that are worlds apart, but yet they really aren't that much different from each other, when you really get right down to it.
So, book #1 takes place mainly in Jason's world; the world of Hollywood, movies, and movie stars. And Chloe is a student studying forensic science. Yep, pretty much worlds apart, wouldn't you say? Well then, book #2 is centered more in Chloe's world, where she examines crime scenes and tries to nail the bad guys. Now that's the kind of story I like to sink my teeth into.
Chloe and Jason are great characters and I loved seeing them develop and grow in
Nobody's Damsel. I really like the direction this series is taking. The reader doesn't get a rehash of book #1, it's a totally new story involving this wonderful couple again, moving on through their lives. The author did mention to me that she plans to alternate the main story in future books; some in the movie world, some in the forensic world. I think I am going to love that! I can't wait to see what the next
Fairytale story is going to be! This has become one of my 'must read' series.
An excerpt from Nobody's Damsel
The street was crawling with emergency personnel, the neighborhood unremarkable and suburban. Three and four bedroom homes with peaked roofs and eaves were set back from the road behind tiny lawns or xeriscape – a popular choice in the desert. A patrol car was parked in front of the crime scene, a fire truck across the street, its lights still flashing. One cop stood in the open doorway, another in the middle of the yard, fending off a crowd of rubberneckers. A man in plainclothes who seemed familiar, but I couldn't place, stood in the doorway and talked on a cellphone. Two personnel who might have been firefighters (I didn't have the uniforms memorized yet) could be seen inside the house through an uncurtained window.
“No, no, no!” shouted Miguel. He jumped out of the CSI van before I even parked it and slammed the door with a bang. I rolled down my window so I could hear what was going on while I parked the van and felt the cool evening air that smelled slightly of wood smoke.
“Get out of the house. Get back,” he shouted. “Away from the house. Consider the entire lot and the street, and possibly the neighborhood part of the crime scene. Vanderholt? Where are you?”
It was not easy to parallel park a van on a street where the driveways were less than a van length apart, but I did my best and killed the engine.
“Where’s the crime scene tape?” he hollered at me.
This was my first time in the CSI van, so I had no idea. I climbed into the back to look around and found a big roll of it right by the rear doors, which I shoved open. With the roll in hand, I jumped down.
Miguel snatched it. “Give me that.” He ran towards the house. “Everyone out! Out! Hey, do we have a search warrant yet for the house? I don't care if you entered legally. If we're gathering evidence, we need a warrant – shut up! Do we know if the victim is the only occupant? Get the DA on the phone. Someone’s called the DA, right?”
Yeah, this was going to be a long night.
“Excuse me,” said the man in plain clothes, holding a cellphone. “I’m on the phone with the DA right now.” I surmised from this that he was the detective, and thus in charge of the scene, and his voice was really familiar.
“Well get everyone away from the house. What’s the matter with you people?” He turned and marched towards the end of the street. “Two roadblocks,” he shouted. “The whole neighborhood is of interest. Two roadblocks. One here, one there.” He pointed at the other end of the block. “Vanderholt!”
I was already on my way to join him. When he saw that, he glared balefully. “Traffic cones,” he demanded.
I turned around to head back to the van. The crowd in front of the house had all turned. A dozen pairs of eyes bored holes into my skin and I looked back, uncertain. Nearly all of them were women.
“It’s her,” I heard one of them say.
“She really does work for the APD.”
“Wait, who’s that?” said a male voice.
“Shhh. Chloe Vanderholt.”
“I hear they're getting a divorce.”
About the author
E.M. Tippetts grew up in New Mexico and now lives in London, where she raises two boisterous toddlers, designs jewelry, and writes novels. A former attorney, she used to specialize in real estate and estate planning, specifically literary estate planning. She currently has five novels out, Time & Eternity, Paint Me True, Someone Else's Fairytale, Castles on the Sand, and Nobody's Damsel (Fairytale 2).
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