Chasing After Knight, by Heather Buchta

Alexa Brooks, valedictorian, track star, and general overachiever has a lot going for her.  But for the past four years, she's carried the weight of the one who got away and the boy whose heart she broke -- Carson Knight.  She wants to make amends but the problem is that he's now Cayden McKnight, an A-list movie heartthrob and Hollywood's best known bad boy.  The reputation doesn't suit him and Alexa knows in her heart that she bears some responsibility for him turning out that way.

Encouraged by her best friend, the girls hatch a plan to meet up with McKnight again and simultaneously to plot out a campaign to blow his cover and expose what a sweet guy he really is.  But Alexa has at least as many things wrong about Cayden as she has right and the further she pursues him, the more her own life falls into chaos.  She risks losing everything she's built up to pursue this one great obsession.

I really liked Buchta's first novel, Beyond the Break and picked up this one on that basis.  But they're very different books and while the heroine of the first novel had a very solid moral core, Alexa's priorities here seem more than a little off.  The discipline that gave her all of her accolades (athletic prowess, academic excellence, and leadership skills) are nowhere to be found when she's blowing her life savings on secret plane tickets to Los Angeles and sneaking into clubs.  And while I suppose there's something romantic about throwing away your life for the love of your life, it all seemed very very unnecessary and cringeworthy.

As with the first novel, it's all well written and easy to get through, but Alexa is a train wreck and it wasn't pleasant to sit on the sidelines and watch her screw up her life.  That there is a last minute deus ex machina moment that rescues her is nice, but hardly redeems a life poorly lived.