Stars in Your Eyes by Kacen Callender is a queer contemporary romance and the author’s adult debut (4/5 stars)

Stars in Your Eyes by Kacen Callender is a queer contemporary romance and the author’s adult romance debut.

I listened to the audiobook via my Spotify premium membership. It is wonderfully produced and has musical interludes and a full cast, featuring André Santana and A.J. Beckles as our leads. I was glad to see Avi Roque was part of the full cast; they’re one of my favorite audiobook narrators right now.

We alternate points-of-view between our two main characters along with mixed media interstitials which include things such as video transcripts, blog posts, memoir and article excerpts, fanfic, and therapy notes. Additionally, the cover is simply gorgeous!

I tore through this book in one day. Both of our leads felt like real people; they were fleshed out and had so much depth to them. There are a good number of tough topics in this book, so it’s important to check CWs. The storyline leaned New Adult to me, and I wish we got a bit more meat with the ending.

While I call it a contemporary romance, I wouldn’t say that’s the main focus of the book. In promotional materials the publisher notes “It’s not only a book about falling in love but it’s about finding love for ourselves” and that is 100% accurate. These men are falling in love while one of them is rising up in the acting world and the other is spiraling out of control.

If you enjoy your books with struggle and growth before a HEA, you should pick this up.

Tropes in this book include: grumpy/sunshine, fake dating, enemies to friends to lovers, forced proximity, opposites attract

CW: CPTSD, mentions of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, online bullying and harassment, suicidal thoughts, homophobia and biphobia, parental rejection and verbal abuse, drug abuse and alcohol abuse, mentions of potential overdose, depression, dissociation

I received a copy of this book to review. Thank you to Forever for sending me a physical ARC. All opinions contained herein are my own.

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