Review: The rocky road to Schadenfreude...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 23, 2012
I am a fan of L. A. Witt's work. She is one of the legion of gifted women who write m/m fiction well - but she is also one of the more elite coterie of female writers who appeal just as much to a male audience as a female one."With the Band" gives us a great premise: a twenty-something rocker who returns to his native Seattle to sing lead in his sibling's hard rock band, Schadenfreude. After a long time away from home, he is startled to find that the older kids he knew as a teenager have grown up, and his reaction to Bastien Koehler, formerly dorky younger brother of his boyhood crush, throws him for a loop.This is not a "big" story:  it is a beautifully drawn depiction of the trials of a young rock band trying to find its way into the big time. Against this youth-driven fantasy scenario is the knotty grown-up reality of the unexpected emotional and physical chemistry between two people who shouldn't be involved with each other. But once love rears its head, one can't just walk away, and the heartfelt - and sometimes heartbreaking - dilemma at the center of the narrative is how the two protagonists, and the people about whom they care and whose future depends on them, deal with it all. This book also contains one of the better depictions of a bisexual character I've seen in this genre. That alone should win Ms. Witt some more readers.