Maybe the best compliment I can give In Her Spotlight by Amy Spalding (February 24, 2026) is that as soon as I finished it, I opened my library app and borrowed all three of the previous books in her Out in Hollywood series. To be clear, I had read—and enjoyed—them all before. I just wanted to spend a little more time in Spalding’s world.
Like a number of other contemporary romance authors, Spalding writes a loosely-interconnected cast of characters, with each book either spinning out the story of an existing character or introducing someone new against the backdrop of the people and places we already know. You can absolutely read any of them without reading the others, or pick them up in any order, but each builds on the relationships established in previous books—so you will find out who ends up with whom if you start with book 4, but it’s not like we weren’t expecting a happy ending, right?
Spalding’s Out in Hollywood series, just like the title implies, is set in LA and follows a series of women who are part of the entertainment industry: actors, screenwriters, assistants, producers, et cetera. In Her Spotlight focuses on A-list actor Tess Gardner, who has made her name playing the only girl in a hugely-popular series of superhero films and is finally carving some time out of her blockbuster schedule to return to her first true acting love: the stage. She has to deal with pushback from her agent, who would rather Tess took on more high-profile—or at least high-paying—projects; derision from her castmates, who are afraid she’s only good when she’s supported by CGI special effects; and the increasingly-confining closet she keeps herself in for the sake of her career. And if that weren’t enough, Tess is literally in the car on the way to her first rehearsal when she discovers the director she was so excited to work with is out due to a series of #MeToo assault allegations. His replacement? Rebecca Frisch… whom Tess fell in love with, and then ghosted, years ago in summer stock.
Spalding does a great job making Tess’s life lived in and real. Her inevitable reconnection with Rebecca is all the more precarious because it threatens not just Tess’s self-imposed closet, but also the joy and renewal she finds as she begins to regain her love for stage acting. How can she do something as irresponsible as sleeping with her director—especially when the previous director was fired due to sexual abuse allegations? But how can she not, when being with Rebecca again makes her so happy that she’s finally starting to take steps towards coming out? It’s this well-drawn world that made me want to revisit the rest of the series: Tess’s manager Max connects Tess to out actor Ari Fox, both of whom were previous protagonists, and I enjoyed the brief glimpses of them so much that I had to remind myself of their stories.
There were a couple of emotional misfires in the book for me. For example, I was fully convinced that Tess was ready to hop back in bed with Rebecca, but I wasn’t as on board with Rebecca’s decision or clear about why she took the leap. But those are minor niggles, and if Spalding told me that Rebecca was meant to be opaque to the reader because Tess was just as confused, I might let her get away with that. Overall, this is another solid entry in a series of really enjoyable books. I hope Spalding keeps filling LA with hot queer women for many books yet to come!
In Her Spotlight will be available Feb 24, 2026 from Kensington Publishing. The other three books in the series are available now. Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.
Content Warnings: mild familial/cultural homophobia
Kathryne Slant (she/her) is a queer Canadian writer and general pop culture enthusiast. She wants to spend less time online and more time at puppy yoga. Find her @sapphoshands.bsky.social.
Leave a Reply