Cassie Woodson is a hot mess…think Cassandra Bowden in The Flight Attendant — after a drama-filled breakup that led to her humiliating firing from her job as an attorney at a top-level law firm, she has been forced to take a job as a legal temp, working long hours on a mind-numbing project reviewing documents, then going home to continue her downward spiral featuring way too much alcohol. Clearly depressed, she notes “it was hard to remember ever feeling audacious enough to believe I had options, as if I got to choose how my life would turn out.” So in Lindsay Cameron’s Just One Look, we have a protagonist that is clearly unreliable — she is also unlikable, but we get glimpses of the extenuating circumstances that led to her current situation: she was grief-stricken and exhausted following the long illness of a family member.
Cassie is aware of her own traits, it seems: at a bar, she muses “I have a lifetime of practice when it comes to masking what I feel behind a plastered-on smile.” The project at work involves reviewing a mountain of boring documents, but a glitch has provided her with the entire contents of the email archive of Forest, one of the senior partners, and she becomes enthralled by the man. He is married, but Cassie still latches on to him as the fantasy figure who will change her life. She is determined to meet him, get him to fall in love with her, and live happily ever after. She researches his gorgeous wife and copies her look, including hair, makeup, wardrobe, everything. There is a lot of interplay between Cassie and her co-workers Dalton and Ricky, with the former being a classic work friend and the latter being a nitpicky supervisor who loves to micromanage the temp pool.
Cassie becomes the full-on crazy stalker in her quest to win Forest, creating a “meet cute” exchange at a juice bar, then at a real bar. She and Forest become involved, although at first he has no idea that she works at his firm or that she is somewhat wacko. TBH, I didn’t like Cassie or Forest enough to really care whether the bad situation that results after her quest to win his heart results in disaster for them. It is a clever plot, and an entertaining read — and I would read another book by Ms. Cameron, but this one just didn’t do it for me. Thanks to Random House/Ballantine and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for my honest review. Three stars.