Rating: 3 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Travis McAllan is a top country music star. In a band with his two brothers, he’s living the life they all dreamed of. Yet, it comes at a cost – Travis is forced to hide his sexuality. Until he meets Geoff Randsell.
Geoff hates country music, but when his best friend needs him to accompany her to a meet and greet after The McAllan Brothers Band concert, he reluctantly goes, finding the man who piqued his interest at the coffee shop the previous night. Though Geoff finds himself drawn to Travis, he’s in a rocky relationship with Doug.
Even when the two men get together, however, Travis has to choose between his music and the man that he loves, while Geoff has to decide whether Travis is worth giving up his privacy and stepping into the public eye.
There was so much about this book that I loved before I even began to read. I absolutely loved the cover of this book. I am a total sucker for celebrities and this cover screamed to me “music star” with its magazine-like cover. The blurb sounded intriguing. Once I started reading, the plot was interesting – country music star with a televangelist preacher uncle who spews homophobic slurs from the pulpit and a brother who keeps trying to throw bimbos at his brother with the belief that if he throws enough of them at him that one will stick. Going incognito, Travis sneaks off to a coffee shop and sits at a table with Geoff and his friend Lu.
Geoff is in a tenuous relationship with Doug. His best friend, Lu, hates his boyfriend and is always pushing other men in front of him hoping he will find the man of his dreams. When she takes him to a meet and greet, he runs into the man who sat at their table the night before – country star Travis McAllan. Despite hating country music and voicing his distaste of the McAllan Brothers music, Geoff agrees to escape the party with Travis. The two begin a whirlwind courtship in secret until they are thrust into the public eye when the paparazzi snap a photo of the two together.
Unfortunately, there were things about this book that I really didn’t like. The obvious is that Geoff is in a relationship with Doug while carrying on with Travis. While there was no sexual cheating going on, there was plenty of emotional cheating. I think what bothered me the most was that Doug was really a likeable character, and I found myself wanting to root for him. Despite being “told” what an awful boyfriend that he is, all we “see” is that he seems to be devoted to Geoff to the point where he is willing to step aside if that is really what Geoff wants. However, Geoff doesn’t really know what he wants. I found Geoff to be selfish. He’s carrying on with Travis while dangling Doug on a string. Even when forced to make a choice he was wishy-washy, which made no sense to me since he seemed to think Doug was a bad boyfriend.
I abhorred Geoff’s best friend Lu to the point that I wanted to flip through pages where she was on. I imagine she was supposed to be some type of Elizabeth Taylor type character, except she was not even half as interesting. She was once a star, but now isn’t actually in anything. Basically, she is riding the coattails of a once lustrous career because everyone invites her to things, though it seems as if no one really likes her all that much. Married several times, she thinks she has a right to offer Geoff relationship advice…because her marriages worked out so well. We never really find out why she dislikes Doug, just that it was instantaneous.
Overall, there was so much potential here, but the book kept falling short of the mark. It was almost as if the author didn’t really know where he was going with the story until it got there. Unfortunately, this left me as a reader connecting with a character who didn’t get a happily ever after, and finding myself never connecting with either of the two main characters. For me, this book was a miss.
A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.
