Stars in Your Eyes is a novel by Kacen Callender.
Finished on: 30.8.2024

Content Note: child sexual abuse, (critical treatment of) racism and queermisia

Plot:
Mattie Cole is having his big moment as an actor. After a much lauded supporting role, he has landed his first lead part, and opposite Logan Gray no less. Logan himself was a child actor, now turned troubled bad boy. Despite sex tapes, his bisexuality and a couple of physical altercations, he is pretty well-established, and the perfect opposite to Mattie’s clean, happy image. He has also made disparaging remarks about Mattie in an interview. When production is overshadowed by yet another Logan-scandal, the production company has the perfect solution to all of their problems: Mattie and Logan just need to start dating, personal feelings be damned.

Stars in Your Eyes keeps a delicate balance in delivering a wonderfully breezy fake dating romance while also acknowledging trauma and what it takes to start to heal (spoiler: love is not enough). I absolutely loved it.

I don’t know if Callender has any personal connection or insight into Hollywood, but Stars in Your Eyes feels very grounded in reality in its description of movie-making and the way Hollywood works. It could still be entirely unrealistic, I wouldn’t know, but making it feel true is quite a feat, given that we all have our ideas about Hollywood anyway.

Maybe that feeling of truth also comes with the honest portrayal of his characters. Both Mattie and Logan have to grow (small sidenote: I loved that the book included that Mattie has to grow as an actor, and that is absolutely possible) and to heal, although Logan comes with a lot more trauma than Mattie. That their need for growth is shown as equal, was another of the book’s strengths for me. Because even when you don’t have huge scars, there’s always room to grow. Logan’s traumatic past is also handled delicately, and the impact from that trauma is shown with a lot of care.

Given the harsh topic, it seems like a miracle that the book still reads and works like a romance, and a good one at that. Mattie and Logan have excellent chemistry, the story moves at a quick pace and is the kind of book designed to make you want to squeal from joy as you read it, while also breaking your heart ever so slightly. There is also some (often tongue in cheek) inclusion of social media commentary on their relationship that worked really well for me.

In fact, I can’t really tell you what didn’t work for me in the book – all of it did.

Summarizing: wonderful and sad and lovely.