Review: Full, satisfying, populated with people to love
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 2, 2014
A.J. Rose has given us a monumental mini-series, a soap opera worthy of PBS serialization.  I loved this book.But most importantly, she has given us an ensemble cast of people who leap off the page, and who grab our hearts and make us love them.  Amy Lane is one of the few other m/m authors who creates ensembles (and then spreads their stories over several books), and it is always a hugely gratifying experience to bring these people in to your life. Rose presents us with Duff and Garrett, childhood friends from the Midwest, who have come to Hollywood find fame and fortune (and, they hope, love). Add to this duo Moonshine and Brad, co-owners of "Queers," the book's eponymous piano bar, where the plot begins to unfold when Duff walks in to interview for a job as a piano-player and singer. The last crucial player in this drama - aside from a stellar group of secondary figures - is Jackson, the gentle nurse and devoted friend who for all his supporting role is the emotional core of the book (for me at least).There is a lot of backstory in this book, and those stories are doled out to us at key moments, to throw characters into relief, to let us understand their motivations in the bright light of personal history.  This includes the villain of the piece, who is in fact a secondary player, but whose actions trigger the heart-stopping culmination of the plot.My one caveat, which cost this book one star, is the transparency of the plot, which could have foreshadowed various plot points with a bit more subtlety...we all know what we want in these books, but sometimes we need to be kept in the dark a little more skillfully.  The journey is just as important as the ending.  We're not afraid of a little uncertainty.