*I received this free ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review.*

Mona Mashad grew up on camera, with millions of fans around the world tuning in to see her every move. Nothing was off-limits: not her first pimple, her first crush, and definitely not the death of her father, Mashad family patriarch and the best dad ever, Ali.

After more than a decade on screen, Mona has discovered the key to being the most famous teenager on the planet: never let your guard down and never give your heart away (because if it breaks, the whole world will know).

But she didn’t expect to meet Lucas Sterling, notorious heartthrob and only son of Jordana Sterling, the beloved President of the United States. Lucas sweeps Mona off her feet—he literally saves her when she falls down the stairs at the Met Gala—and for just one second Mona wants to let her walls come down. So, it hurts a lot when he betrays her, and even more when their moms demand they pretend to keep dating to appease their respective fan bases.

Normally, a fake relationship would be manageable for Mona. After all, she’s used to playing a part for the camera. But pretending to fall in love with Lucas when she’s still furious with him is no easy feat. And things get extra complicated when she meets Kai. A (hot) surfer and all-around normal guy. For the first time in her life, she can forget the cameras and just be…Mona. Could he be the escape from this fake reality that Mona needs? Or will fake dating America’s most eligible bachelor lead to real feelings?

For Jalili’s sophomore novel she got to show off her versatility by taking us through the Mashad’s latest reality show all about Mona, and her now infamous fake romance.

I’ve noticed some authors tend to have reoccurring trends with their characters with certain traits popping up in different protagonist, but Mona, and the structure of her novel is drastically different from Josie’s narrative in Finding Famous. While Josie has a tendency to overthink, spiral and overshare, Mona epitomizes confidence and has an instinct for thinking about how her actions would look for the Mashad brand, for viral moments, and for tv. FF was your typical normal girl thrust into Hollywood while this is a third person omniscient with talking head confessionals from the reality show.

As such, Mona feels a bit distant to the reader. While we are let into her head as she aspires for this reality show to be no-holds barred in telling the truth, one always gets the feeling that there’s a barrier between. It’s never a feeling that Mona is an unreliable narrative, but that she’s distant enough from the events that she’s able to retell the story and rehearse it into perfect soundbites.

But hey, that’s entertainment, and with the reality show angle, it sells the entertainment value. It was like a soap opera between the semi-self destructive/impulsive tendencies of Mona, the fake-dating angle, and the love triangle she gets entangled in despite her efforts to protect her heart.

Now, love triangles can be tired, but in Jalili’s hands, it works. You’re not quite sure who will be endgame as both are strong contenders.

Sterling matches Mona in having a similar life-style, similar player dating style, and similar hardship in losing a father while dealing with a workaholic mom who tends to monetize private moments for their careers. She can relate with him.

Kai is the normal boy who doesn’t care about pop culture whatsoever, allowing Mona to have a chance to have a friend who doesn’t know anything about her/have expectations of who she is with all the benefits and baggage that come with being a Mashad. She can relax with him.

In fact, I thought Kai and Sterling were both so good for Mona I was thinking “Maybe a throple could work?” or “Maybe she ends up with one, gets amicably divorced in the future/he dies, and gets a second chance romance with the other.” Yeah, I was equally rooting for them both.

And while the love triangle is a big part of the story, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the impact of family. While Josie was learning about her half-family, Jalili can dispense with the “getting to know you” and immediately show the fierce bond the Mashads have for each other. Within one scene, we see exactly how importance the sisterly relationship is between Mona, Meesha, and Melody. Readers can appreciate other sides to their personalities that they wouldn’t have been able to from Josie’s POV because Josie doesn’t have that history, Mona does.

We also see how that bond can hurt as well with Mona feeling lost having to hide her fake relationship from her sisters, and just feeling left behind with Melody and Meesha happily coupled while she’s dealing with a shitshow.

There is the fact that Mona has been defined as the wild Mashad. It’s a role she’s grown up with, and leans into it, knowing that it’s her brand and her shield when she needs to defend someone she loves. However, it also pigeon-holes her that people tend to only see her mishaps. It was particularly piercing during a fight with Meesha when she basically implies Mona was an idiot with no self-respect. You could feel her pain. It doubly hurts that Mona does know her worth most of the time.

She knows she’s pretty even though she’s “fat” (you know, Hollywood fat) compared to her sisters. She knows she’s smart, getting into Harvard on her own merits. She’s confident in she thinks that as long as she knows her good qualities, she’s fine. But one can tell she needs more. She needs that shoulder.

The shoulder that was her father’s. Ali always believed that she was a star in of itself. Another star for Jalili is that a reader can palpably feel Mona’s love and loss for her father whenever he’s mentioned on the page. Their bond was real, and the blurred lines between public consumption of Ali’s reputation and familial remembrance makes it feel cheap. It’s poignant as it dovetails nicely with Mona’s own confusion about who the real Mona is as the brand Mona, and personal life Mona are enmeshed with the fake dating scam.

Mary also gets a chance for nuance. She’s such an interesting character with her dual sides. On one hand, she’s single-minded, manipulative manager of the Mashad empire where even coercing her daughter to fake date a guy she hates without compunction feels so icky. She’s not warm, talk about your feelings mother. Yet she carries so much feeling for her family, arguably the same intensity of emotion that Mona has, only she’s learned to control it. You can see a lot of similarities in the two which is probably why they butt heads just as much. The reveal of how she and Ali really met was so sweet. Honestly, I’d love to read a prequel with her.

The other characters get their chance to shine too. While Josie is involved (and we get some insight to how her inclusion in the show has been received in-universe), and has some pretty funny moments, Jalili wisely keeps her as a tertiary character, breaking the norm where characters make their former protagonists big parts in the sequel. It allows the reader to be more immersed with Mona’s POV and her world which is drastically different from Josie’s.

We get answers to how Meesha’s breakup with Bunny went (although I still wish to know how the public outside of Bunny’s fandom reacted to the news, I understand Meesha dealing with biphobia would probably require a different book to go in-depth), Josie and Timmy’s continued relationship and Axel and Melody’s marriage. Axel kinda annoyed in the first book, but he was funny here. Maybe it was colored by how Mona is happy because he makes Melody happy even though his new age woo-woo is ridiculous.

New characters like Sterling, and Kai are well-done, and his little bro, Rudy, is absolutely adorable. Def fav character in here. Plus Jalili’s worldbuilding is top-notch, creating a parallel Hollywood world with its own brands, celebrities (namedropped alongside well-known ones or thinly veiled expys), more tolerant world with a feminist president (we can only dream!).

Spoilers below about the end of the love triangle

I have to address this. Jalili totally shattered my expectations with Mona ending up with Sterling. Usually when there’s a love triangle between rich confident player and sweet, down-home surfer dating a starlet the latter wins because the starlet wants normalcy.

Not so here. While I did think Kai would have a bigger chance because of how a tiny peck made Mona float up in the sky, the bigger emotional moments were Sterling’s chance to shine, and upon reflection it makes sense. Not only do they have the vibe, but their backgrounds, their flaws, their strengths match each other. He never judges her for her impulses or what the world views as spectacularly trashy behavior, but he’s also willing to call her out on it. She does the same for him.

Furthermore, Mona never wanted normalcy. Yes, she sometimes feels confused where the brand stops and private Mona begins, but she has never wanted a change from her Mashad lifestyle. So while Kai presents a nice break, and a friendship that Mona needs in her life, Jalili is accurate that the differences in lifestyle might always be the obstacle between them. Plus Kai is so nice. While he would never hold it over her, like her ex does, I could see Mona feeling insecure and resentful about it.

If I had one nitpick is that sometimes I think there was a missed opportunity for Mona’s growth. A lot of it was tied with the love triangle, learning to trust her heart and let down her walls. Which is a good arc, but with how some of Mona’s biggest mistakes are tied to her impulses, I wish we could have explored that more. I mean that Mona’s brand is being the messy one. She uses it as a shield, but sometimes it feels like she uses it as a stopping point. Like the world expects her to be the bad one, so when she makes a mistake, there’s a whole routine of dealing with the fallout and shouldering the blame. She’s played it so long she doesn’t resent that she’s never the hero in the tv narrative.

I wondered if there is subconscious fear that if she tried to be more responsible, it would ruin her brand. She would be less interesting to fans if she tried to grow up (going to college, had a steady relationship, became a producer like her mom cuz she’s got the brain for it), so she stays in her lane as the party girl, and never tries to prove that she can have layers. But perhaps that would have changed the arc too much, so never-mind. Just a food for thought.

Otherwise, this book has it all. A confident yet flawed protagonist who is allowed to be messy and real. Two spectacularly swoon-worthy love interests. The power of family. Breaking YA norms. Utilizes every one of its 400 pages, pushing the plot along with cliffhangers worthy of Keeping up with the Kardashians.

It releases in-stores on October 14th, so go pre-order and run to the nearest B&N now.

5 (seeing) stars.