Review: completely blown away!!! amazing!!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 27, 2014
I'm blown away. I hate to be cliche in my review for a book that's anything but cliche. Nothing about this book is cliche. You've never heard this rock star story before. The characters, the plot, the writing... all of it is just so original and refreshing. It's angsty and smart and clever. It's sweet, and gut wrenching, sometimes scary. It's everything.This book follows Noah Lockton as he is catapulted into music stardom after winning a televised music competition. (Think American Idol.) Told in alternating first person points of view, the reader is taken along for this roller coaster ride with Noah and his lifelong best friend, Chloe, as they navigate the waters of his newfound fame.Noah is instantly famous after his big win, but this is no stereotypical rock star love story. There's a sadness running quietly throughout this story, an underlying sense of loss that Noah is going places and leaving Chloe behind. I felt my heart silently breaking even before anything had happened to make me feel that way. This story is about friendship, about loss, about the fear of losing the constant of a best friend when life sends you in different directions. But it's so much more than that. Because simmering quietly beneath this friendship is a love story.When Chloe finds herself on tour with Noah, as a blogger for a magazine, the dynamic between the two changes drastically. Sure, the fear of being physically left behind is gone. But with so many newfound obstacles introduced to their lives, the story takes a turn into completely unpredictable territory. Their feelings continue to grow and change, but the expectations and obligations of Noah's career combined with Chloe's confusion over where she fits, things only deteriorate. Despite their proximity, being on tour together, they never really feel attainable to each other. They never say what they're feeling, they're always on different pages, dating someone else... the angst, the feeling of distance despite their closeness is palpable. sad. There's always something keeping them from being on the same page... girlfriends, boyfriends, jobs, fame, all juxtaposed with their own failure to communicate makes for a heart wrenching story. My stomach was in knots the entire story thorough. The feeling of longing is a tangible thing, I lived it right alongside these characters.I can't say enough about what Becky Wicks has done with this story. Her writing is superb, pulling the reader in from the very first page and never letting go. These characters were developed so perfectly, this story so layered and complex. Every single character in this book was crafted so deliberately, so specifically, no matter how secondary they are to the plot. The dialogue is fluid and natural and real. The pace and the build so perfect. There is no lull, never for a second did I feel bored or removed from the story. I was in it, every single page. This author has retold the story of Peter Pan and his shadow in the most mesmerizing, beautiful manner.