Title: Headliners (London Celebrities #5)
Published: January 2020
Publisher: Harlequin – Carina Press
Readership: Adult
Genre: Romance
Rating: ★★★★
I received a copy of Headliners from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Sparks fly when two feuding TV presenters are thrown together to host a live morning show in Lucy Parker’s latest enemies-to-lovers contemporary romance.
He might be the sexiest man in London, according to his fan site (which he definitely writes himself), but he’s also the most arrogant man she’s ever met.
She might have the longest legs he’s ever seen, but she also has the sharpest tongue.
For years, rival TV presenters Sabrina Carlton and Nick Davenport have traded barbs on their respective shows. The public can’t get enough of their feud, but after Nick airs Sabrina’s family scandals to all of Britain, the gloves are off. They can barely be in the same room together—but these longtime enemies are about to become the unlikeliest of cohosts.
With their reputations on the rocks, Sabrina and Nick have one last chance to save their careers. If they can resurrect a sinking morning show, they’ll still have a future in television. But with ratings at an all-time low and a Christmas Eve deadline to win back the nation’s favor, the clock is ticking—and someone on their staff doesn’t want them to succeed.
Small mishaps on set start adding up, and Sabrina and Nick find themselves—quelle horreur—working together to hunt down the saboteur…and discovering they might have more in common than they thought. When a fiery encounter is caught on camera, the public is convinced that the reluctant cohosts are secretly lusting after one another.
The public might not be wrong.
Their chemistry has always been explosive, but with hate turning to love, the stakes are rising and everything is on the line. Neither is sure if they can trust these new feelings…or if they’ll still have a job in the New Year.
Headliners was a book I randomly requested for review on Netgalley because I was trying to explore a few more contemporary romance books and authors (after jumping into the genre in 2019) and it sounded kind of fun, especially since it included the enemies-to-lovers trope, which I adore. I didn’t know too much about the book or the author before requesting it and it sat on my Kindle for a while before I picked it up. Interestingly enough, it was #LoveOzYA author, Jodi McAlister, who unintentionally gave me the incentive to pick up Headliners (and later the first book in the series, too) with her romance reads recommendations, and she was definitely right – Lucy Parker’s books are great!
Rival TV presenters, Nick and Sabrina, have one chance to save their imploding careers – work together to salvage a morning talk show that no-one watches. They have until New Year’s Eve to turn around the show that has poor ratings, while trying to learn how to work with one another and amidst a series of odd occurrences that happen on set and undermine any progress that they make.
This was a really fun and easy to read contemporary romance book. It includes a lot of romance tropes – enemies-to-lovers, celebrity-romance, forced proximity – and they all just added to the story, which itself is driven along by two very strong characters.
Sabrina and Nick have a lot of chemistry – both when they’re fighting and falling for one another – and reading the progression of their relationship was really entertaining. You can tell that Lucy Parker had a great time writing the two of them. Their passion for arguing with one another at the beginning of the book makes the development of their relationship all the more compelling and satisfying, especially since it’s a series of unfortunate events that brings them closer together as they try to salvage what’s left of their talk show careers.
I liked that their profession was a big part of the story, too. Both Nick and Sabrina have worked hard to get where they are, and it highlights the fickle nature of being in the public eye – when any small incident can cause everything you’ve worked towards to come tumbling down. It’s as much a part of the story as Nick and Sabrina and it was really interesting to read about the morning talk show/television industry in this way.
Overall, I had a great time reading this, and can’t wait to read other books in the London Celebrities series.
Noveltea Corner 
