3.5/5.0 This book was strange and readable, but longer than it needed to be.
Almost immediately, the FL (Braxton) describes her feelings in situations as tastes, flavors, and scents. It was strange and I went back to check that I had caught what was being put down, but the author uses flavors as Braxton’s cues to how she feels. I won’t dive into that more, it plays into the plot later in the book, but that is there. You could create a chart of correlating tastes or flavors to feelings that would remain consistent for the whole story.
Also along this avenue of strange, is Braxton’s seeing colors attributed to sounds. This wasn’t as developed as the taste thing, but again you’ll read that and ask yourself, what? It is there.
This book is very readable. The dialogue is just ok but the split POVs are done well. I had no issue following the events, action, internal angst, or anything. The tropes are many and mighty, enemies to lovers and a reverse harem tension dynamic being the two main ones, which fit into the touring band setting easily. The setting of on the road and concert venues was good and the author did some song writing to help round out the umbrella under which they characters all interact. The writing style effectively tells the story.
I think there a little more “in between” filler than was needed. Less detail and rehashing of background, prior events and characters, outside factors that lead to current events, and even some unnecessary sex scenes that served no plot device at all, would have made this book shorter. This information might not have been completely vital, some of it was good to know, and all of it could have been written in a tl;dr way. I did get to a point where I was skimming though parts, just catching the overriding take away, rather than be bogged down in the minutiae.
In this same sphere, there could have been more about Braxton’s sex addiction and recovery. It was used to further the story, and to the advantage of the three ML (Houston, Lenon, and Jericho), but it was never really addressed as an addiction, or portrayed with with as much concern as the drug and alcohol addictions of other characters. I think that it could have been handled more respectfully, and to show what recovery might look like. Braxton carried the most trauma of all the characters and was really never fully supported or helped.
I cannot remember if I have read other books from this author, I think I have and that’s how I found this one. I will probably look for more by BB Reid to try.
Amber Chenoweth
Kindle Customer
Thicc & Ired