The Back Porch Reader has flown the coop to soak up some tropic sun.
I’ll be back soon with new book reviews and recommendations. In the meantime, please enjoy this favorite selected from my GoodReads archives.
~Katie

Blurb:

There is underlying beauty in destruction….

Miah Thade, Finn Reese, and Ritchie Meyer are Resonator, an indie rock band with an edge—best friends turned rock stars, known as the Detroit 3. When Evin Rene appears in their life none of them can deny he belongs with Rez.

They may have named their first album Ruin Porn because people get off on seeing how Detroit went from deeply loved to thoroughly forsaken, but they’re determined to prove that blight isn’t the entire story and blight isn’t always ugly.

Ritchie, Miah, Finn, and Evin take Resonator to a level no one anticipates. But no prosperity comes without sacrifice, and no secret stays hidden without a trail of lies. As Rez’s fame grows, so does the intensity between two of its members…as well as their potential for destruction.

Evin and Finn are about to discover the underlying beauty in their ruin porn.

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Review:

This review originally posted on GoodReads September 2, 2015.

This was fun and plenty angsty with some good LOL moments and super hot sexy times.

I’ll be back later with more thoughts when I get to a real keyboard.

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ETA (9/6/15) I’ve been separated from this by one and a half books already so I may not be as thorough as I’d originally intended.

I was HOOKED from the beginning on this one –and that’s become rare these days. There were quite a few LOL moments that kept me thoroughly entertained and engaged. There were a few OMG moments as well. Some boys behaving badly – as they’re wont to do. Some super-hot MMM & MM sexy times. Overall, this was a great read.

When I was in college (a hundred years ago) some of my best times were as a groupie to a local college band of three, then eventually five, guys. They had amazing talent of originals and re-worked covers and thought they’d made the big time when they got their first out-of-state gig. Over the years, they gigged at college bars all over the southeast…so they ended up bigger than they’d thought. Counting the girlfriends, and other friends who had staying power, there were about twelve of us who were thick as thieves. We groupies did everything we could to support those guys. I can’t you tell how many amps, guitars, and drum parts I hauled and helped set up. But when the gigs were over, and on regular days after classes, we were a tight-knit little family that was full of outrageous humor, raucous laughter, and practical jokes; all this was paired with hugs, dog piles of sometimes four or five of us sleeping in a bed because nobody wanted to go home, shoulders to cry on, acceptance, big-brotherly protection highlighted with sing-alongs on the front stoop with an acoustic guitar and the sounds of nature. Y’all, it was a bubble of closeness, belonging, infectious laughter, and friendship the likes of which I have yet to find again in my life. I’m still friends with them – but we’ve all scattered and gone on to be responsible adults with “real” jobs and families. We don’t see each other often…but when we do we’re blessed with the clock turning back a few decades, and the laughter and music flows just as easily.

So, this book took me back to some of that. I’ve read plenty of other books with musicians and rock stars. But…there was just something about this one; the closeness and history of the D3 maybe, and their mostly genuine inclusion of Kevin that carried me back to a time in my life of intimate friendship that was the absolute best.

Right, so…my only wee little criticism is the head-hopping between all four band-mates when the real romance is only between two of them. I could kind of get on board with three POVs, but the purpose of the fourth eluded me. I can’t be too upset about this because there’s an MF author I love who writes the heroine in first person, the hero in 3rd person, and occasionally sprinkles in secondary characters in 3rd person…and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest (obvious section/scene breaks) when these days I’m all kinds of cynical about POV and head-hopping. So I’m a fuckin’ hypocrite. I’ll own that. I reserve the right to bitch about it when I want – but I promise not to tarnish my ratings because of it unless it results in really bad writing. In this case, the writing was strong. Except it did take me until about chapter four to parse out who the actual relationship was meant to include – then again, that could have been a result of late night drinking while reading.

Also, I’d hoped to come here and say that these two authors were a powerhouse together. But…I’m not yet qualified to say so. I’ve read quite a bit of Peterson’s work and enjoyed it immensely. As it turns out, I haven’t read any of McAuley’s, and I’m not real sure why that is. Must. Get. On. That. Immediately! Maybe they are a powerhouse together…I’d like to think so because this book rocked and I’m all in when book two rolls out.