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reviewed Chasing Stars by Alex K. Thorne (The Superheroine Collection #3)

Alex K. Thorne: Chasing Stars (2018, Ylva Publishing) 4 stars

For superhero Swiftwing, crime fighting isn’t her biggest battle. Nor is it having to meet …

Tropes collide! A surprisingly good book ensues.

4 stars

I got a chapter or two into this, figured out what was going on, and spent most of the rest of the book giggling at the premise. I mean... A Hollywood star's personal assistant gets roped into a fake-dating arrangement by her boss (to whom she is, of course, very attracted). But wait! She's also secretly an alien superhero, and said boss is acquainted with both the hero identity and the mild-mannered PA.

It could easily descend into silly hijinx, but Thorne manages to give the characters some actual depth with their respective trust issues. Not so much relationship angst that I wanted to throw rotten fruit and shout "just talk to each other already!" but enough that I kept reading because I cared about them and wanted to know how they'd work things out.

I do wish the secondary characters had been fleshed out a little further, but overall it was a pretty good read.