Very cute and light hearted but not for me, it was a good fluff piece and an easy read. I am not really a rom com person but I wanted to test the waters

This book was completely not what I was expecting going by the front cover but I was honestly very surprised - in a good way.
Was a nice easy rom-com book set in New York, with lots going on in between.
Very easy to read, with a big mix of different characters.
My only grumble is that the ending was left very open, and didn't conclude some of what had been building throughout, but hopefully that just means there will be a sequel at some point.

Warpaint is an enjoyable romcom with unexpected twists and turns. Set in New York City, Willow is trying to find her feet and you are made to feel her joy and pain along the way. I read this book in the space of 24 hours and would recommend this to anyone who wants a quick, pacey read!

Enjoyed this series from J.J. Haven’t really read this author before. Enjoyed it all. Will read more. Liked it very much.

Not my usual read, but I enjoyed this book and will look out for this author in the future. The main character was likable, however I feel the ending could have been better.
Thanks to Netgalley and the author for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

The first book in this new series.

Funny, heart breaking, and romantic all rolled in to one. I enjoyed this book.

Willow Campbell, a 33-year-old makeup artist with no family and no friends but her colleagues and her overbearing roommate, leaves hometown Glasgow in Ireland to go live with her handsome new American husband Rick Delgado in New York. Rick has an apartment in Manhattan, and though she has only known him for six weeks, what could go wrong? The course of their love is charted in a little yellow book, and Willow is full of hope.
Willow is sold on romance but it is a rude awakening that awaits her in New York. On arriving at the building, she realises that the fancy apartment of her dreams is nothing but a loft reeking of cigarettes and infested with ants. Worse, she finds in the bathroom scanty underwear and other [evidence of a woman’s presence.]
Rick’s ex-girlfriend, Isabella, tells Willow that she is expecting Rick’s child. Suddenly nothing is right. Desperate to escape the shame of having to be deported back to the life she left behind, Willow must find herself a job while proving to the authorities that she and Rick are happily married. It is the only way that her Green card can be processed.
She finds herself a job at a department store, D’Arcy, somehow breaking through the reserve of the formidable owner, Gigi Gerson, known to her employees as Mrs G. She finds a friend in Jackson, a fellow Irish who came over with the man of his dreams and found despair. But it isn’t smooth sailing. Isabella is also employed at the same department store and Willow finds herself thwarted by her at every step.
But Willow is too angry with Rick to even attempt a compromise with him. Especially after she buys a ticket to Glasgow and is convinced by Jackson to give her romance with Rick another chance. She returns to the apartment, hoping to find Rick heartbroken and finds Isabel and Rick doing things they shouldn’t.
But then Mrs G offers her a way out. If she can win the makeup competition, then she could cement her place in America. But Isabella is offering stiff competition. Will she succeed?

This chick-lit book was a fun read. I liked the idea of Willow making her own place in a foreign city, moving on from the obscurity of her life in Glasgow to working as a makeup artist in New York, totally unfazed by the disaster that her romance had turned into.
Willow is the kind of character who acts first, and thinks later. Most of the problems she suffers are a result of her failure to think things through.

Music plays a huge role in the book between songs playing in Rick’s home, Jackson’s home, or D’Arcy’s, it seemed as if everything had a musical score which spoke to Willow.

One thing I really liked was how New York felt like a character in itself. The author re-created its crowds, its culture and its vibe. It piqued my desire to see this glorious city for myself someday.

There were some mistakes. A man called Cecil is qualified as the doorman of the apartment building the second times his name is mentioned, not the first, leaving me to wonder who he was.
Another thing that I found irritating was the one tear and the two fat tears that were constantly sliding down Willow’s cheeks. Rick had a single bead of sweat. Just as annoying.

The whole romance between Willow and Rick would have felt more real to us if we had seen their courtship up close, but we are only part of the picture after

I’m not generally into makeup, but in Willow’s hands, makeup is warpaint that gives people confidence by helping them to hide their blemishes.

Willow made me care about her even though I generally don’t care about the fashion and makeup industry.

This had me turning the pages from the very start, when Willow embarked on her flight to NYC and toward her new dream life, which turned out to be a little different to what she'd expected. Lots of twists and turns throughout and a fascinating insight into what really goes on behind the glamorous facade of the cosmetics counter.

i really liked how unique Willow was, she was a great main character and I enjoyed going through this book. I look forward to more from the author.

Interesting debut novel from the author, lots of great ideas here. I enjoyed willows character and the journey she took.

It’s cute comedy story, which prompts us to look at our life problems and how most of them can be solved if we keep working towards them rather than running away from them. The tone of the story is satirical and the big fashion names which are thrown every few chapters kept me interested and going. A cute light read especially for those who love makeup and fashion industry.

Warpaint is the story of Willow Campbell, a Scottish makeup artist who falls in love with a dashing American and allows herself to be swept away in a whirlwind romance. She agrees to marry a man she’s only known for six weeks and sets out for his home in New York City, only to find that his life isn’t as he described it to her. This book has an entertaining premise and a plucky heroine, but overall it’s a dissatisfying read and not worth picking up.

Willow is working on a makeup counter when she meets Rick, a New York financier who is in Glasgow on business. He asks her out on a date, and within six weeks, to marry him. Willow, bolstered by a self-help book that has emboldened her to chase her dreams, accepts, and they marry before flying back to the states. When they arrive in New York, Willow finds that Rick has exaggerated the quality of his apartment, as well as his own single status. Rick has only recently extricated himself from a seven year relationship, and evidence of his ex is all over his apartment.

Unsure about the future of her fledgling marriage, Willow goes out to buy a tea kettle, and finds herself at the D’arcy Department Store. There, she befriends an English employee named Jackson, who gives her a hot tip about a job there. After securing an interview and landing the job, Willow finds out that the artist she’ll be working next to is none other than Rick’s ex, Isabella, who claims to be pregnant with his baby. Not only would that make for a hostile work environment, but Willow has the added stress of being under investigation due to her immigration status.

Given that things haven’t turned out as she’d planned, Willow has decisions to make. She needs to figure out if her marriage is worth saving, what the next move is for her career, and if she’s going to stay in New York, or pack it in and return home.

Willow is really enjoyable, although it might be grating to watch her make wrong decision after wrong decision. The best part of the book by far is Willow’s personality, her kindness, and her optimism. She does, however, come across as incredibly naive, which might be because her parents died, leaving her alone in the world when she was very young, or just bad writing. Pretty much every other character is severely underwritten or totally one-note. Rick in particular is inconsistently characterized. He doesn’t have enough of a character arc to believably change by the end of the book, and just seems to do whatever he needs to do to move the plot along. Isabella is just plain confusing- she is supposed to have a fine arts degree, but she continues to work at a makeup counter in a department store. She’s supposed to be the best artist at D’arcy, but she doesn’t pursue other opportunities that might allow her to better provide for her child. The relationships characters have to each other seem to fluctuate as the plot necessitates, and their motivations are inconsistent. Rick wants Willow to stay with him, but is antagonistic to her and doesn’t try to make amends for his deceptions. He starts out as kind of a standard dirt-bag, but tries to do the right thing sometimes. If he had better foundations laid for his personality and history, it might look like growth, but basically, he exists in the story as a deus ex machina to solve a problem whenever things are looking too bleak, or cause a problem when things are going too smoothly.

There are also points in the book that stretch the reader’s credulity. For starters, Isabella is supposed to be just over or around six weeks pregnant at the beginning, but she’s already showing? Many people don’t even know they’re pregnant at six weeks, so that seems unlikely. Then there’s the way everyone at the department store goes out of their way to help Willow, despite not knowing her, some of them bending over backwards to do nice things for someone who is basically a stranger. Willow also seems to be constantly broke, which doesn’t really make sense for a woman in her thirties who has been doing skilled work and living with a roommate for a decade. Money only ever becomes a factor in the story when there needs to be a barrier to Willow getting what she wants. The book is also populated with totally unexpected plot-twists, which seem to be intended to move things along but just come out of nowhere and don’t make sense, adding nothing to the overall narrative.

This book also seems as though it hasn’t been put through very stringent editing. There are details at the beginning of the story that seem important, but are never expanded upon, and characters we are supposed to care about and trust seem sloppily sewn into a pre-established plot. Willow is supposed to have had some kind of illness that left her with scars, but that’s never further delved into, and it leaves another loose end in a book that’s lousy with them. What’s frustrating about this is that there are clearly good bones to the story. Willow is the strongest part of the narrative, a really engaging main character, but everything else is a mess. Given revisions and maybe another hundred pages of actual story, this book might have been a great read, but as it stands, it was a huge disappointment.

It doesnt support or open after I download the pdf version of it. It's also not showing in my shelf in netgalley and I cant open it to read Please look into the issue and if you can send me the pdf in my mail ID- taniagungunsarkar@gmail.com I cant read the book from here. Please look into the issue

Kept my interest but had its issues🤔

3.5 🌟stars
I picked up this book because of the heroine's Scottish connection. I found that her Scottish roots, though mentioned, did not really play much into the story. The plot did hold my attention from start to finish but I can't say it was very memorable.

Willow, the heroine, seemed scattered and inconsistent. I don't know if the author meant her to be that way or if it was just the writing and the inclusion of such a variety of subplots in a shorter book. Willow cares deeply about something or someone one moment yet seems to move with barely a backward glance rather quickly, especially in her hot and cold treatment of her new husband. He may be a jerk, but we barely get to see him interact with Willow, nor do we know much about the whirlwind courtship that got her to the States in six weeks🙁.

The immigration subplot for Willow and the department store where she fortuitously falls into a job was, IMO, broadly drawn and not successful. And there were inconsistencies like having the sun come up at six a.m. at the darkest time of the year and mentioning Rick experiencing Scottish winter when their courtship happened in the fall!

If you are just looking for a light, somewhat plausible single girl adventure in a world full of pitfalls, then you may enjoy this relatively quick read. I can't say I disliked it, but I had been hoping for something better.

Thanks to publisher Books Go Social and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest review.

2.5 stars for this debut novel. Willow is a Scottish makeup artist who drops everything to marry an American man (who she's known for 6 weeks) and move to New York City. When she arrives in NYC with her new American husband, she discovers that she may have overlooked a few red flags - like:

*The fact that he broke up with his ex immediately prior to visiting Scotland⁠ (and meeting Willow);
*That his ex also happens to be a makeup artist;
*That he has lied about where he lives, his family dynamics, and possibly more.
⁠
Although we liked the premise a lot, we were left a little cold by the execution. It's hard to understand Willow's motivation. She blows hot and cold about almost everything: leave New York or stay in New York? Make her marriage work, or never talk to her husband? Throw herself into her new job, or make no effort to show up for important events? We were also interested to learn about what it means to be a makeup artist, but unfortunately didn't learn much.

In sum, it was a very interesting setup that we felt didn't deliver on its promise.

Romance | Women's Fiction
Are whirlwind marriages always deigned to go wrong? Can you fall in love (not lust) within a matter of weeks and marry and give up everything you’ve ever known to follow your new spouse into a new country and culture?
Well this heroine thought she could.
Willow is not the youngest heroine, nor is she the most beautiful, and so when Rick – a dashing American who appeared to have plenty of money – claims to have fallen in love with her, asks her to marry him and move to his Manhattan loft, she accepts. With trepidation its true. Which was justified as Manhattan lofts are not quite what she expected – especially when she finds remnants of Rick’s girlfriend in evidence. Seems she had only just left the ‘loft’. And wasn’t best pleased about it either and was determined to let Willow and Rick know.
This is a sweet tale of misguidedness and naivety and how difficult it can be to settle into a new culture and worse – to get a job in the States. The legal requirement of a valid and happy marriage being one of course.
With some finagling we manage to get to a happy ending through tears and struggles and stubbornness which makes one fall for Willow in her innocence, even not so much Rick. But her choice. And Willow finds she has some lovely co-workers who are prepared to put themselves n the line for her, demonstrating their depth of friendship.

**I received and voluntarily read an e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

It's a quick read (probably 1-2 days for most people), and quite predictable, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need a book that lets you see the ending coming, even if it ends a little too perfectly.

The characters were intriguing and I would have like to know them a little better. I think this is one of the few times I will say the following- this book could have been a little bit longer to add more depth to the characters and to deepen the plot a little bit more.

Overall, it's a nice book- nothing particularly new and exciting, but nothing terrible either.

"I was one of those strange people who liked their own company and relished time alone."

This is not the type of genre which I would usually choose to read, however, with a MC from Glasgow, I couldn't resist. The plot follows Willow, a make-up artist who has just arrived in New York with her new husband. Instead of the Manhattan apartment she dreamt of, Rick lives in a small bedsit and his ex-girlfriend is clearly still in the picture.

I would definitely say this is a feel-good novel and would recommend it to people who are needing a little pick-me-up. Willow is a strong lead and I loved her positivity. I very much doubt I would have been able to work alongside my husband's pregnant girlfriend without screaming. The book is relatively short and easy to read.

However, I felt Willow was a little stereotypically Scottish. There were references to tea, irn-bru, whisky and Tunnocks Tea Cakes all within the first three chapters. The plot was also quite predictable and the ending a little too perfect to be believable. Overall, the book read too much like a movie, but I thought it was well-written and amusing.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Follow Willow as she starts a new life in New York and things don't work out as she had imagined. Alone in a new country, she needs to figure out what to do and how to survive there. I would recommend it to someone who is looking for an easy book to read as I was able to finish it within 2 days. However, I did wish that the book was longer to better flesh out the characters. Thank you NetGalley for the early access to the book in exchange for an honest review

I finished this book but unfortunately it just wasn't for me. This doesn't mean that the book isn't well written because it is, and the characters are wonderful. It just didn't capture my attention as much as I would have liked. I had to really force myself to finish it.
I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. Thank you for the opportunity.