![To Be or Not To Be: The Actors (The New York Artists) by [Goldstein, Cathrine]](https://i0.wp.com/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/518JxYVmWOL.jpg?w=1180&ssl=1)
The New York Artists Series
Cathrine Goldstein
The Wild Rose Press
February 5, 2018
Blurb: Jenna Joyce has the opportunity of a lifetime: to play Ophelia in an off-Broadway production of Hamlet starring the hot daytime drama bad boy, Trevor Hughes. She desperately needs this job to save her family and herself. The problem is Jenna can’t stand Trevor.
Trevor Hughes is tired of his villainous Caspian Locke character and flashy soap opera life. He’d love to give it all up and go back to his gritty acting roots, but he can’t, his sister and nephew rely on him to pay their exorbitant medical bills.
When Trevor and Jenna manage to build an offstage relationship, the futures of their families as well as themselves are threatened and Jenna panics. But even if Trevor can overcome his challenges, can he free Jenna from hers? And will he ever be able to prove to her that, despite all obstacles, their love is meant to be?
SASCHA DARLINGTON’S REVIEW
Acting is in Jenna’s blood, but she feels as if she is under incredible pressure to succeed because she made a choice that disappointed her mother: to become an actor. If she hadn’t made this choice, if she’d become something more concrete that would bring in a lot of money, her brilliant younger sister would have an immediate chance at her future. Instead, Jenna is trying to make her life as an actor work and finding other means to earn money in order to provide for her mother and sister.
Trevor loves being an actor but feels stuck in the role of Caspian Locke on the daytime soap. He has dreams, but like Jenna, he has others to think about besides himself, his young nephew, Toby, who has a congenital heart defect. Without the money from the soap opera, how can Trevor take care of his sister and her son?
Like Cathrine Goldstein’s first novel in the The New York Artists Series, Summer of Irreverence (reviewed here) which I adored because, well, Rock Star, To Be or Not To Be takes the reader to a different world with unexpected characters. Jenna is a brilliant actress, feisty, sometimes temperamental, yet vulnerable; Trevor is kind and nerdy, not at all like his bad boy soap opera character. Their attraction is immediate, almost too immediate, and by this I mean that it was too immediate for me.
While I liked all of the unexpected qualities of the two main characters, I wasn’t as enamored with the story itself, but part of that may also be because I just didn’t buy into Jenna’s reasons for wanting to keep Trevor from her life. It all hinged on one thing, which made her seem very young and immature, probably too young for Trevor. For a brilliant woman, she wasn’t very good at thinking outside of the box, which was also in contrast to her penchant for the Bohemian lifestyle.
Still, To Be or Not To Be is a good romance for those of you who are a little tired of the predictability of the endless trope-driven stories, especially if you find romances between actors to be your thing.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
rating: 
3 butterflies and a ladybug out of 5 butterflies