What I Did for Love by Susan Elizabeth Phillips rocked! I loved it. I could barely put it down to go to the grocery store. SEP has a great voice as an author and a wonderful way of making you care about all the characters, major and minor, in her contemporary romances. They are real and flawed and you root for them to figure it all out so they can get to a happy ever after.

This latest story takes you to Hollywood. Reformed bad boy actor, Bramwell Shepard can’t get a decent acting job after screwing up his life (ala Rob Lowe sex tape). Georgie York is an American icon actress who is the object of the public’s pity after being dumped by her ex-husband (ala Brad Pitt leaving Jennifer Aniston for Angelina). They were once co-stars on a sitcom but it all went badly wrong. Now they’re hostile strangers who are married. They are each struggling toward a new life of meaning. Sometimes their needs conflict and sometimes their needs coincide—along the way they fall in love—with great difficulty because trust isn’t something either of them is good at giving. Along the way, SEP gives us Paul and Laura and Chaz and Aaron in secondary storylines—more damaged people who need to learn to love and trust and risk failure to go after their dreams.

It’s a great story and so complex that I can’t even give a decent synopsis. I can just say—wow! Five stars. Makes me want to go back and re-read the entire SEP backlist.