Review- ShutterGirl by C.D. Reiss

I am not hurt.

I don’t need a second chance with him, or a life I thought I had.

While he was out forgetting me to become a movie star, I was building a career out of nothing. A career as a paparazzi, but a career. For a foster kid who bounced around every home in Los Angeles, that wasn’t easy.

This camera is all I have.

He’s nothing to me. Every time I take his picture and sell it, I remind myself that I did it all without him or his approval, his cinnamon smell or his clear green eyes. He lights up the screen like a celestial body, but he’s nothing but a paycheck to me.

He can throw my camera off a balcony, and nothing has to change. We can stay king and queen of the same city, and different worlds.

Except this is Hollywood, and here, anything can happen.

When two opposing worlds collide, is their universal gravitation enough to bind them together? 

 Or it a recipe for disaster? 

Laine Cartwright, a paparazzi or paparzza if you should so choose. She's excels at her job by getting to her mark and taking the shot faster than any other pap.  She's made connects all over her city and depended on her connections. Her financial livelihood  began to crumble when she became reacquainted with a long lost friend, Michael Greydon. They had met in high school, he was a senior to her sophomore. She was his distraction then and now. 

Michael Greydon is the good guy. He follows all the rules. He stays on task and never deviates from what is expected of him.

His life was following the path set out before him, until his world collided with Laine's. "If I was going to be irresponsible and get involved with a woman, I would probably couldn't 


pick anyone worse than Laine Cartwright." He is movie star, she's a paparazzi and their relationship would spell disaster.

Their relationship did not take long to be noticed. They were caught up in a negative media frenzy.  She feared her love for Michael would once again turn her life upside down. When they first met he had given her hope, let her believe she be something and then he disappeared. It pushed her into seeking love in all the wrong places. Now she fears she will lose again. "I didn't want my life to change. I'd done everything I'd set out to do since he'd left, and there he was again ready to destroy everything I'd built in exchange for a mouth that fit mine like a palm curled over a fist."

Laine's past, as seen through a shutter, comes back to haunt her.  It's ironic what had saved her life is now destroying it. Michael will do anything to protect her, but will it be enough? Can their relationship survive Laine's calamities and accept their not normal lives?

ShutterGirl is an emotional roller coaster ride from start to finish. An unexpected relationship develops between two opposite sides of a coin, neither wanting to destroy the other. They fight for their love through catastrophes. They struggle like humans do to stay together after having their world crash around them. In the end they find themselves in each other.  Lanie helps Michael "to break the status quo into a million pieces and live in the center of unknowable, unplanned, unpredictable, boundary-free universe." Laine finds love and safety with Michael, that she lost had lost as a child. CD Reiss is a master at evoking emotions. She tells tales of endless love, the struggles endured, sacrifices made and the final reward. 5+++ stars!