Synopsis
Seventeen-year-old Sacha McLeod isn’t looking for someone to rock her world. She just needs a new violin string to replace the one she broke while practicing her audition piece. But when she hears the boy in the music store play guitar, the energy, violence and unpredictability of the music thrills her and she falls hard for Dylan and his wild, inventive sound.
As their attraction heats up, Sacha finds herself spending less time with her violin and more time with this exciting guy who makes her feel things she’s never imagined. Her plans for her violin-virtuoso future – and her self-confidence – are shattered when she screws up the audition for a prestigious summer music program. Failure isn’t something she’s had to face before, so when Dylan asks her to spend her vacation with him in the city, she lies to her parents, pretends she won a place in the summer school, and secretly moves in with Dylan. She’s expecting romance, music and passion, but when she finds herself playing second fiddle to Dylan’s newly acquired drug habit, she realizes despite what the songs say, sometimes love isn’t all you need.
Desperate to understand what’s competing with her for Dylan’s affections, she joins his band and does drugs with him — just once. But once become twice, three times, and more. As the band’s popularity grows, so do the pressures and her drug use escalates. If Sacha can’t figure out how to leave the band, and Dylan, she’ll lose herself and her own music forever
Review
*I was given an advanced copy of this book by the Author in exchange for an honest review*
Sacha is a gifted violinist who meets Dylan in a music store one afternoon whilst by new strings. This meeting is the catalyst that starts a chain of events that leads Sacha down a path that neither her or Dylan could have predicted.
So I read this book after reading half of the blurb, in hindsight, I should have probably read the whole of it more thoroughly because if I had I probably wouldn’t have read it, I don’t enjoy books that feature drug use and this book had a fair lot of that.
Taking away any personal feelings of the direction that the book went it and looking at it objectively it did a good job of showing how people spiral into things that they never thought they would. The writing was good and the characters were fairly well developed.
I don’t have much more to say, I didn’t like this story but I do appreciate what it was trying to convey. I think you are a fan of grungy romance then you’ll like this one.
My Rating: 3/5 🌟🌟🌟
About the Author
Having spent a lifetime travelling the globe, Kate Larkindale settled in Wellington, New Zealand. A marketing executive, film reviewer, and mother, she’s surprised she finds any time to write, but doesn’t sleep much. As a result, she can usually be found hanging out near the espresso machine.
She is the author of contemporary YA novels The Sidewalk’s Regrets, An Unstill Life and Stumped along with several others that no one is allowed to see. She has also written one very bad historical romance, which will likely never see the light of day. She is working on several more YA novels that may or may not ever be finished…
Her short stories have appeared in Halfway Down The Stairs, A Fly in Amber, Daily Flash Anthology, The Barrier Islands Review, Everyday Fiction, Death Rattle, Drastic Measures, Cutlass & Musket and Residential Aliens, among others.
Books & Other Pursuits 