After I finish this review, we’ll see if it’s suitable for use on LibraryThing and Goodreads…
The LibraryThing Early Reader description for Santa Fe Fandango by Elinor Groves is as follows:
Matti Glover is thrilled to learn that hot Hollywood heart-throb Antonio Reed is not only filming a movie in Santa Fe, but staying in the exclusive complex where she’s house-sitting. She rescues him from a busload of teenage girls, and grateful and intrigued, he asks her for a date.
Matti’s caught up in a Cinderella dream come true—until midnight hits and it’s pumpkin time. Any reader who ever cherished a secret crush on Robert, Justin, or Orlando will enjoy this romp through the fan’s ultimate fantasy.
Okay, granted, I requested a book that sounds like a silly young adult romance, but I’ll admit it: I absolutely adored Meg Cabot’s Teen Idol. I was hoping for a fluffy bit of ridiculous fun. I mean, even the cover looks appropriate for a twee little novel.
Matti, an artist, is house-sitting for a friend of hers in an exclusive Santa Fe community. Both she and her extremely flaming BFF (so Hollywood-stereotypical that it made me want to barf- I don’t know a single gay man who actually acts like that in real life) are obsessed with an up-and-coming actor named Antonio Reed.
When I say obsessed, I mean that she has cardboard stand-ups, posters, all two of his movies that she’s watched more than twenty times, and uses his image as a reference in countless drawings. She’s filled notebooks and canvases with his picture. She gets flustered and self-conscious thinking about him. She’s so goofy over this heartthrob that I honestly thought this girl was 17 and doing a family friend a favor, but noooo. She’s in her late twenties. My age.
…and then it turns out that Antonio is there. In Santa Fe. Staying in the same community. Matti sees him walking around, and has the presence of mind- despite her twitterpated response- to warn Antonio about an incoming horde of teenage girls. When she runs into him again at the only restaurant this place apparently has where movie stars are willing to eat, he asks her out, charmed by her lack of crazy-fan-antics.
In the meantime, Matti is constantly freaking out over how to not have frantic fan freakouts, because she (rightly) thinks that he doesn’t want to be romantically involved with someone who is only interested in the characters he played and his extremely attractive face.
And that, folks, is the entire conflict of the book. She tries to hide it, his bodyguard tries to convince him that she’s one of the nutcases, she gradually becomes less of a crazy fan, they fall in love and WHOA HOLY COW SURPRISE EXPLICIT SEX SCENE.
Turns out, not a young adult novel. This is an actual romance novel, fulfilling the expectations of the genre.
And then the book just… ends. He finds out she’s a crazy fan, decides he doesn’t care, and they live happily ever after. Within the last 5% of the book. Least interesting climax of all time.
However, as I read, I began to put pieces together. The end clinched it.
I was reading fanfiction. One of the fanfics written by a girl obsessed with an actor to the point that she writes fiction about the life of a real human being to give greater life to her fantasies about a hot guy. A piece of fiction meant to give the obsessed girl hope that the hot actor will fall in love with her despite the creepy things she’s written about him.
And the guy in question? Orlando Bloom. The character’s name is “Antonio Reed.” They are both English, the physical description matches, and their first big movie role was that of the hot, young, supporting character in an ensemble cast (Legolas in Lord of the Rings vs Will Scarlet in Robin Hood). That single role thrust the previously unknown young actor into a whirlwind of interviews and paparazzi. The more I read, the more obvious it became. The whole thing reads like the author’s fantasy about herself and Orlando Bloom. It was honestly a little sad by the time I finished.
If you can read it as just a light fantasy romance novel, it’s not terrible. It’s definitely not good, as the poor pacing clearly shows, but it could be worse. But if you’re a person who keeps accidentally finding the trainwrecks of fanfiction about celebrities… eesh.
