Book Review: The Holdout by Laurel Osterkamp
November 27, 2013 7 Comments
The Holdout: What it is about
From Amazon: “Robin wanted to win The Holdout, a cut throat reality TV show, so she gave it her all, challenge after challenge. Then she fell for Grant, with his irresistible eyes and heartbreaking life story.
But Grant was only using Robin as they competed for a million dollars. Once home, Robin wants to hide from the humiliation as episodes of The Holdout are aired, and she worries her family was right all along; she’s not a survivor.
Yet she could surprise everyone, and have the last laugh.
Besides, Robin now has jury duty. And as she forges ahead, confronting her demons about bravery, justice, and romance, Robin will come to decide which is more important: the courage to stand alone, or the strength to love again.“
The Holdout: What I thought
Let’s start at the cover: not so nice! I never read books with a cover like this. It looks romancy to me, and romance is a genre I don’t enjoy. I do judge a book by its cover, but I must have read the description first, and then wanted to give the book a chance.
A good thing too: look beyond the cover and there is a very nice light novel that I enjoyed a lot.
Robin tells two stories and reveals more about each storyline as the novel goes on. The first is her experience in a reality show. She’s back home and it’s airing at the moment. The reader knows Robin wasn’t treated nicely (but then, who ever is on a show like that?) but we only get the backgrounds of what is currently being shown on television, and not much more. What happened on this show? Why is Robin so unhappy about it?
At the same time, there is a court case, where Robin is a member of the jury. The process of the jury deliberations is interesting, and what happens in the jury reminds Robin of what happened at the reality show. Bit by bit Robin realises what is most important for her and learns to deal with the reality show-demons along the way.
A fun read that was just what I needed after some heavier novels.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (good to very good)
Number of pages: 236
First published: 2013
I got this: from the author for review (ebook)
Genre: contemporary fiction
About Judith
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The cover isn’t great, is it – I did a bit of a double take, thinking ‘Judith doesn’t usually read books like this?’. Looks a bit like a Mills & Boon novel! But it sounds like you enjoyed it, and I like the idea of reading about life after a reality TV experience. I wonder how many great books I dismiss based on a bad cover!
Marie, that’s right. It’s not “my” sort of cover at all. But it really was a fun read. I usually choose books on the basis of the cover. I think there are enough good books with good covers that you don’t have to worry too much about the good books with bad cover. Can’t read them all, you know! 🙂
Hahaha .. From the cover I thought it was a romance too and was wondering why you were reading it!
Thank you for the review!
And thank you for the book, Laurel. I very much enjoyed reading it.
The cover is not the one I would chose either, but I’m glad you finally like it.
I have never read a novel with a TV show as background; sounds interesting!
Isi, yes, it was fun. There is also another book with a tv show (similar in the sense that they also travel) which was even better. But what was it called again? 🙂