I have to say it’s not very nice watching a marriage fall apart. Even if you don’t know the people involved. A celebrity couple who made their name through home design and now have a successful TV series, are feeling the strain in THE HONEY-DON’T LIST. Maybe the punishing TV taping schedule has stressed them out. Maybe they would never have stayed married anyway. All Carey Douglas knows for sure is that her job depends on the couple’s continued stability – but it’s appallingly awkward.

Carey is a personal assistant to Melissa Tripp, and at a wrap party, she and the recent hire James McCann, assistant to Rusty Tripp, find Rusty in a compromising position. Oops. Can this be hidden? Well, from the crew, with luck, but not from control-freak Melissa. Rusty, it turns out, was flirting outrageously with ladies to try to turn Melissa’s attention back to him. He didn’t succeed, so took the matter further. Melissa wants no argument – this stops right now, and they both play nice in public. Not just their spinoff books on remodeling but a book on staying married are at stake. The social media wisecracks are being tweeted, however… can the glue hold?

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Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings write under the pen name Christina Lauren and have several successful collaborations to their credit. I am sure they had fun plotting out the account of a five-star bus tour between towns for publicity while forcing the reserved Carey and nice but underemployed James to work together. Casey is a sympathetic character. She was hired by the Tripps at sixteen and now can’t imagine working elsewhere, although she’s not treated well by Melissa, and Rusty relies on her in other ways. Casey needs health insurance for a hand condition called dystonia, which probably isn’t improved by the fact that she hasn’t had a day off in four years. And even though she’s been with the Tripps for a decade, James is the one who gets consulted about the show’s direction. What is that all about? The resentments come thick and fast. We’d hardly think there was time to fit in an adult romance to this fast-moving tale, but the authors manage to squeeze one in somehow.

THE HONEY-DON’T LIST has humour, despair, and strife. Also, we know from an early page that the police are involved. We just don’t know why. Not many home decoration tips are contained, but some relationship tips are… sadly, they aren’t being followed.

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