Under the Lights: A Daylight Falls Novel

by Dahlia Adler

• ISBN10: 1633920186
• ISBN13: 9781633920187
• Publish Date: 30 June 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Spencer Hill Press
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

This was such a good read. Yes, Josh could be a bit of a douche, but sometimes you love someone who's a bit of a douche and I loved Josh. At the end of the day, he was honest about who he was and sure, it was a bit gross and man-whore-ish but he never mis-led anyone about his actions. His story was amazing, and after seeing a little bit of him in Dahlia's first Daylight Falls novel Behind The Scenes, it was so nice to meet him, with the added bonus of learning his own story.

And I loved Vanessa so much. I loved her in Behind The Scenes, actually. I loved every aspect of Vanessa's story. I loved her relationship and chemistry with Bri - the pages were metaphorically on fire! And they were just so cute together. Female/female relationships are so rare in the book world (for reasons I have no clue about) and it was just so refreshing to see it play out in Under The Lights. I was rooting for those two like I rooted for Ally/Liam in Behind The Scenes.

I'm very much a Dahlia Adler convert and I can't wait to read whatever she writes next, she's such a good storyteller.

[bookishzelda]

Under the Lights is a great story about love winning and finding your place in the world. We get to live life through the perspectives of Vanessa and Josh as they deal with being a part of Hollywood.

It’s hard to explain my relationship with Josh. I didn’t like him, his annoying vulgarness felt like he was trying too hard. If I met him in real life I would call him out on it. He’s the guy that I would roll my eyes at if I met him at a party. I don’t hate him either though. Which is weird. The thing about Josh is that he is what he is. Take it or leave it he doesn’t care. As the book progresses and he forms a stronger bond with Vanessa, my opinion of him changes. By the end of I actually end up liking him.

I loved Vanessa. She is sassy and snarky but still a little vulnerable. I liked how even though she spends some time confused she doesn’t really lead people on. Sometimes she gets sucked into what other people want for her and starts following along a track but once she takes hold of her life. She makes good decisions.

Vanessa and Brianna are such a great couple. They have chemistry right from the get go and we get so see how things develop from them. To be honest as much as I thought Van and Bri are perfect for eachother I almost wanted to rip Van in half so that Josh also could be with her. I don’t if I have ever liked both love interest so much. When Van picks one over the other it’s not heartbreaking or terrible. She still has a great friendship.

There is so much a love about this plot. I mean Dahlia Alder’s writing is perfect first of all but get to see Hollywood through the eyes of a minority. That is definitely something different. Van brings up many good points. She might be a star of a major network tv show but how many Asian-American’s do you see holding the lead in a movie? Every time she made a point about that and why she felt she needed to do what people said it made sense. I felt sorry for her and realized it seems ridiculous that it’s even the case. So we have two things that Van is struggling with, that she might be gay and how that will affect her job and the fact that she is asian and how will that affect her job in the future. The way it’s laid out is great. Also we have Josh’s side of things where he is more struggling with the fact that maybe he isn’t so sure what wants to do and have a Hollywood starlet for a mother might have influenced is life more than he even realized.

I really enjoyed this book and now I need to go back and read the first one. Which you don’t need to read in order to read Under the Lights, but I want to know more about how Ally and Liam got together. I loved the plot and the writing and I hope we are not completely done with Daylight Falls.

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

I was super excited when I learned that Under the Lights was in fact a F/F Romance, because c'mon?! There's not nearly enough of them! Vanessa is Ally's best friend from Behind the Scenes, and she's worrying about her future. Her parents want her to go to college, but Van knows acting is what she wants to be doing. She just doesn't know how many roles there will be for a Korean-American actress when Daylight Falls ends. Meanwhile, Josh's life is kind of crumbling, since he can't get an acting gig and his mom is threatening to sell his beach house if he doesn't co-star in her upcoming reality show.

Under the Lights was a weird one for me. On the one hand, I loved it and thought having the dual POVs not be love interests was unique. But on the other, I feel like Van and Bri didn't get nearly enough page time, because Josh's story took away from them. I feel like this could have been two really strong books instead of just one pretty good one. Actually, Josh's story felt much more developed than Van's since he was just dealing with figuring out what he wants, rather than that plus developing a new romance.

As far as Van and Bri's relationship goes, I really enjoyed them together. Van has no clue that she likes girls when Under the Lights starts. She just knows that she's not really into her boyfriend, Zander, and doesn't want to commit to the Purity Pledge with him. Then she meets Bri and it's like something ignites in her. They go from bickering and death glares to making out, which is confusing for Bri. But she goes from zero to gay in .8 seconds, with nothing in between. She does struggle with what this means for her, her career, her family, and her relationships, but it all happens way too quickly since she only gets about 150 pages to deal with all of it. Her story really deserved a whole book, because it was an important one and I loved the way the author handled it in the few pages that she did. So I can only imagine how much better it would have been if there was more.

In the end, I enjoyed Under the Lights a lot. I just wish that it had either been longer or split up. I actually loved that Josh was interested in Vanessa and that it kind of felt like an enemies-to-lovers romance in the beginning, even if it was only in his head, because obviously. I guess I'm just disappointed that these two great stories of self-discovery were smooshed together instead of getting their own distinct spaces.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.