High on drama and BDSM!

Incredibly talented and incredibly insecure, leader singer / songwriter of rising rock group Twisted Wishes Ray Van Zeller lives a chaotic life with legendary highs and lows. While Ray tries to hang on to sanity, the record label has imposed a band manager who is determined to undermine Ray at every turn. After the original drummer departs for rehab, the brilliantly talented Xavier Demos joins the band to support their concert tour. Ray initially resents Xavier who he has known since high school but he meshes with the band seamlessly. He may also be good at reining in Ray’s chaos and shielding him from their aggressive and dictatorial manager.

So, I love Anna Zabo’s novels and there was lots to like about this. Anna has captured the controlled chaos of a band on tour and the claustrophobic internal band dynamics. I liked Ray’s creative genius, Xavier’s steadying hand, and the other two band members (who get their own books later). I could even see why Anna chose to give Xavier and Ray a BDSM dynamic with some steamy scenes. This novel is firmly in the “dig a big hole, push the main character into it, and start piling the dirt on him while he tries to dig himself out” school of writing and I struggled with Karl, the band manager, and his unsubtle aggression—it stretched credibility. It didn’t seem normal for the band, especially Ray, to continually put up with Karl’s escalating behaviour and I would have thought a more normal response for the band would be to contact the label and refuse to work with him. At the very least the band would have called Karl out for his behaviour and given him ultimatums. 🎧 Voice actor extraordinaire Greg Boudreaux is always good but I had to double the speed on the audio to get through all the travails! Looking forward to Dom’s story, though!!

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