Story Rating: 4.25 stars
Audio Rating: 4.5 stars

Narrator: Sean Crisden
Length: 6 hours, 49 minutes

Audiobook Buy Links: Audible
Book Buy Links: Amazon | All Romance

Jake Brenner has until his 21^st birthday to make a living with his music. After that, the deal is to go back to school or possibly get a “real” job. It’s almost that birthday. He is busy with his band, The Wayward Sons, but they play locally and haven’t had their big break yet. Jake updates his fans regularly from his blog with his own brand of wit and humor. When the band needs a new guitarist, quiet, mysterious, and wildly talented Parker is just what the band needs.

Parker may be just what Jake needs as well, although Jake has no idea of this. The guys become fast friends and roommates and develop a special bond. But Jake is not interested in settling down even though everyone around them thinks there is something going on with him and Parker. Parker also has a lot of issues to overcome regarding the family that won’t speak to him and there is that rule about band members not dating each other. Although the attraction is sparking, Jake may have to do quite a bit of convincing to let Parker know that this time a relationship is exactly what he wants.

American Love Songs offers a friends-to-lovers story set around music and family. It is also set around Jake’s sense of humor. Jake is comfortable and confident with who he is, yet tries not to take himself too seriously. This becomes evident through his entertaining blog posts directed at fans that are woven throughout the story.

Parker is looking for a job and a home after just moving to the area. He finds both in the same day with Jake. Parker is somewhat of a musical genius and he hits it off with Jake right away. The story is told from Jake’s point of view so Parker’s character did remain at a distance for a good portion of the book and more from him would have been welcomed. Parker and Jake become great friends and work well together. Jake suddenly realizes that he is attracted to Parker, but Parker does not discuss his personal life. It then becomes Jake’s mission, which he posts about on the blog, to find a hookup for Parker, although there is constant speculation that the two of them are really together.

A lot is made of Jake being a player and not wanting to settle down, but that didn’t jump out at me the way the story unfolded. That may have been due to listening to the book on audio. The narration enhanced the story, but the format somewhat detracted from it. Sean Crisden does a great job with the narration and the voices. He especially has a great dialect for Parker ,which at times is a contrast to the geeky way that Parker is described. He also doesn’t hold back during the intimate scenes, which certainly adds to the audio experience.

The audio opens with a blog post and then the entire story is a flashback. The initial delivery had me going back several times to catch up with who all of the players were. Jake offers entertaining insight along the way through his blog posts and he also speaks in “footnotes” or side comments. The narrator would say the word “footnote,” which would pull me out of the story every time and I do not believe I would have had the same issue had I been reading the book. There is also an interview with the band and the characters initials are thrown out in rapid succession to designate who is speaking and it was difficult to follow on audio. While the narration on this one really brought out the personality of the characters, the storyline left me with some distance.

I enjoyed the story as a whole. The style of the story did make the audio challenging in some areas. I greatly enjoyed how Crisden brought the characters to life and for that alone I would recommend the audio.

A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.