Book Review: The Hollywood Assistant | May Cobb

This is my spoiler-free review of May Cobb’s psychological thriller, The Hollywood Assistant. If you are looking to find out how The Hollywood Assistant ends, head over to my spoiler-review where I unpack all of the juicy details!

What is The Hollywood Assistant about?

Offered a dream job in Hollywood with a famous director and his actress wife, an insecure woman becomes their personal assistant where their secrets and lies place her in the crosshairs of a murder investigation.

Cassidy Foster is heartbroken, stuck in life, and getting a little too obsessed with plants. Then when a well-connected friend becomes sick of Cassidy’s moping and gets her a gig with famous Hollywood couple, Marisol and Nate Sterling, Cassidy jumps at the chance to move to sunny L.A.

The Sterlings are warm and welcoming. A perfect couple. All Cassidy has to do is be available a few hours a week for errands. In return, she has access to luxury. Designer clothes. A sparkling pool. Great pay. When Nate takes interest in her, asking her to read scripts he’s written, Cassidy thinks this could be the key to kickstarting her writing dreams.

As their business relationship grows, so does their attraction. Nate is sexy, talented, and Cassidy can’t believe her luck. Clearly, Marisol doesn’t know what she has. Maybe that’s why the two are always fighting when they think Cassidy isn’t around. But Cassidy learns she was hired for a different purpose.

The Sterlings aren’t the perfect couple. Marisol isn’t the perfect wife. And when one of them is found dead, Cassidy becomes the perfect suspect.

What did I think?

May Cobb writes thrillers that nudge that delicious line of voyeurism that make them extra juicy. Suspenseful, soapy, a tiny bit steamy, and full of surprises—I haven’t read a book by Cobb that I didn’t love! Her latest summer thriller, The Hollywood Assistant, follows a woman who moves to LA to be an assistant to an elite Hollywood couple, only to find herself the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

Cassidy is a boy-crazy piece of work! I felt for her, she had her heartbroken and that isn’t easy. Now she’s starting over in a new job (which to be fair, is pretty amazing) in a city where she doesn’t know anyone. Except her friend Lexie (who got her the job), but Lexie is in Prague filming for several months. Poor Cassidy has to hang out at the gorgeous home of the rich and famous, getting free clothes and flirting with the husband.

An interesting thing about this book is that Cassidy isn’t fully in on Nate over Marisol. Often in these sorts of premises, the young, impressionable woman is all-in on stealing the man from the wife. That isn’t exactly what is going on with Cassidy and the Sterlings, though. If anything, Cassidy is equally as enamored with Marisol–both admiring and envying her. Nate can be a bit hot and cold, but Marisol seems lovely. Until some more events unfold…

I have a lot to unpack about how this book twists and turns towards the final delicious sentence, but I’m going to take that over to the spoiler review where I explain the ending and talk about those juicy twists that kept me hooked.

Audiobook Review

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and Penguin Random House for my copy. Opinions are my own.