Review: Marlowe Banks, Redesigned by Jacqueline Firkins

Marlowe Banks, Redesigned by Jacqueline Firkins

Blurb from Goodreads:

In Marlowe Banks, Redesigned, Jacqueline Firkins wonderfully captures the messiness of failure, forgiveness, and embracing a second chance on life and love.

Marlowe Banks’s life has come apart at the seams. Her engagement ended abruptly. Her latest costume design was shredded by critics. Her student loans are overdue. Her parents have never been more disappointed. Desperate to hide from her failures, Marlowe flees New York City to embrace invisibility in Los Angeles as a menial Production Assistant on a popular TV show. While sorting socks and taking care of her boss’ spoiled Weimaraner, no one can confront her poor artistic choices or the end of her engagement, the end her ex refuses to accept.

When a costume mix-up requires Marlowe to step into in a scene, the camera catches a heated look between her and Angus Gordon, the show's arrogant bad boy, thrusting Marlowe into the spotlight. As the pair is forced together on set, Marlowe learns she's not the only one hiding. Walls come down for both of them, revealing a life Marlowe isn't sure she's ready for, and when her past comes calling, she has to decide if she's going to stay invisible or if it's time for a redesign.

 This is incredibly maudlin for something kind of billed as a romance and it is more enemies than lovers, for sure.  I enjoyed the behind the scene descriptions of costume design, etc. I just never took to Marlowe -- the other characters were great in that it was easy to understand their motivations and actions but even by the end of the book, I didn't understand Marlowe, at all. I hope you have better luck!

Marlowe Banks, Redesigned comes out next week on October 25, 2022 and you can purchase HERE.  

Marlowe Banks never dreamed that an MFA from YALE would earn her a job organizing hangers, picking crusted insoles out of an old pair of Top-Siders and busting every last fingernail in an attempt to resize a watchband using only a safety pin and the force of her formidable will. The title Costume Production Assistant has sounded so glamorous. More commonly referred to as a PA, she was a cog in a machine. Nothing more.