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Author: Elizabeth Briggs
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | TBD
Music major Maddie Taylor just finished her junior year of college and has a summer internship lined up with the LA Philharmonic, yet every night she practices guitar and secretly dreams of a louder life. But geeky girls like her don't get to be rock stars. That is, until tattooed singer Jared Cross catches her playing guitar and invites her to join his band on The Sound, a reality TV show competition.
Once on the show, Maddie discovers there’s more to Jared than his flirty smile and bad boy reputation – and that he’s just as big a geek as she is. With each performance their attraction becomes impossible to ignore, but when the show pressures them to stay single they’re forced to keep their relationship secret.
As the competition heats up, Jared will do whatever it takes for his band to win, and Maddie must decide if following her dream is worth losing her heart.
“I didn't know what would happen with the band, but I knew we'd get through it. Because what we had together was more than music. It was love.”
Like some of the books I read, I have no idea what to expect in More Than Music. I am quite picky when it comes to books about music because I don’t want it to be used as something that will make the character cooler. Good thing, Dianne (once again) spazzed about this.
What I love most about this is the characters because they’re easy to read and quite relatable. Maddie was someone that you can definitely meet in real life. I like how her musical orientation and its difference with what she chose is not highly stressed. She’s not written as a cliché classical musician who’s actually a closet rocker, whose innocent or somehow close to perfection.
One of the things that I didn’t expect was me liking Jared. I honestly thought that he’ll be the cliché rocker who’s so goddamn hot and broody and all the things that comes to mind when you imagine a rocker protagonist. At the beginning, I had a slight difficulty about his personality, but understanding him was like knowing someone in real life—you’d know more about the person when you spend more time with him/her. Yes, he’s hot but I find him hot not just because of his physical appeal, but because of his talent, passion and his cheekiness.
Everyone in the band expressed their passion to music and I cannot express how thankful I am that the author made it that way. It even showed the difference between those who really loves music and those who just wants the fame and the money that goes along with being an artist.
I love the idea behind the band’s name—Villain Complex. As I was reading the story, I really wished that I could just search them on Youtube and see them perform. I want to hear the twist they put in the songs, especially in Bad Romance. The friendship within the band was also something you’d love when you read this. It was there. It was real.
The bottom line is that More Than Music is not just about romance with two people who have an exceptional chemistry with each other. It’s also about friendship, family and passion for music.
Elizabeth Briggs is a Young Adult and New Adult author who lives in Los Angeles with her British husband and a bunch of fluffy white rescue dogs. She's a guitar-playing geek who loves books, rock music, and video games, goes to Comic Con every year, and is still hoping to be a Jedi when she grows up.
Elizabeth Briggs is a Young Adult and New Adult author who lives in Los Angeles with her British husband and a bunch of fluffy white rescue dogs. She's a guitar-playing geek who loves books, rock music, and video games, goes to Comic Con every year, and is still hoping to be a Jedi when she grows up.
Elizabeth currently works with WriteGirl to mentor at-risk or pregnant teen girls in writing, to help them get through high school and into college. She also volunteers with Bichon FurKids to help rescued dogs find a new, loving home. She previously worked as an intern for literary agent Jill Corcoran of Jill Corcoran Literary Agency, an intern for Entangled Publishing, and an editor for Curiosity Quills Press.
Elizabeth is represented by Kate Schafer Testerman of KT Literary and is a member of SCBWI and RWA.
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