Another Stupid Love Song by Miranda MacLeod and Em Stevens is an enemies to lovers, age gap, celebrity, and contemporary romance.
Maxine Gardner is a rock and roll legend whose career has taken quite a hit. She’s on a mission to get her old band back together for a once-in-a-lifetime reunion tour which will hopefully reignite her failing career. She’s got a few problems, for example, one band member is recently deceased and the other hates her guts. To get this tour up and running, her fate rests in the hands of a younger woman who could steal the spotlight from her for good.
Jade Weathers is a gifted musician whose mother and aunt were members of an iconic rock band. After her mother’s death, Jade’s aunt continues to push her into a stable career with a symphony going against Jade’s dreams of being a rock star. Jade’s willing to do whatever it takes to make her dreams come true even if that means partnering with someone she shouldn’t trust. The woman who ruined her mom’s career.
Their agreement is supposed to be a means to an end but the more time Max and Jade spend together, the harder it becomes to deny the attraction sparking underneath the surface. Is it possible everything they’ve believed about one another is wrong? This tour could lead to true love or completely tear the band apart once and for all.
How much will they be willing to sacrifice for success?
Characters
Maxine is a forty-two-year-old rock legend who’s been in the music business since she was a teen as a member of the late 90s female rock band Matchstick Girls, founded by her friends Grace and Cindy. The band broke up after only a few years under very contentious circumstances. Her solo career, while mildly successful, has been dwindling for the last decade. She doesn’t quite feel like a has-been but she’s getting there which is why she needs the reunion tour so badly. Max knows this is a tough ask because Grace is recently deceased and Cindy hates her guts. Fortunately, Max is a master at persuasion and Cindy agrees to a summer reunion tour and okays Jade, Grace’s twenty-seven-year-old daughter to join as the drummer.
Max is a loner who has spent her life keeping people at arm’s length. Her abandonment issues and the fact that she is still in the closet, have made her afraid to form real bonds. In Jade, she finds someone to make beautiful music with in more ways than one.
Jade is a twenty-seven-year-old musician whose musical talent was fostered all her life by her mom, Grace. She’s grieving the loss of her mom and is struggling to figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life. The offer to tour with the Matchstick Girls for the summer couldn’t have come at a better time. While she’s reluctant to trust Max in the beginning, she quickly learns there’s more to the rock star than meets the eye.
Writing
I’ve read many a book by Miranda MacLeod and have enjoyed all of hers including the ones she’s coauthored with TB Markinson. To write this one, she teamed up with author Em Stevens and I have to say, they did a masterful job together.
A narrator tells the story from both Maxine and Jade’s points of view which I found to be beneficial because we got to know both our main characters, hear their thoughts, and feel their emotions. The story flowed so seamlessly that I found I was just flying through the pages. Their use of descriptive detail and dialogue really made the story entertaining.
Pros And My Favourite Parts
When a book’s blurb says,“celebrity, age-gap”, I immediately swoon. Throw in enemies to lovers and I’m a goner. I really liked the chemistry between Max and Jade from the start.
Jade was trying to hate Max but the more she got to know her, the more she realized that things aren’t always what they seem. I wish I could hear them play together because it’s what made them so intertwined. The authors did a great job developing their relationship. They quickly went from enemies to friends, then more. This book is steamy and there were times I needed to fan myself.
Cons And Heads Up
I wish I could buy the Matchstick Girls albums.
The Conclusion
This was a thoroughly enjoyable read, not just because it has my favorite tropes but because Miranda MacLeod and Em Stevens have written multidimensional characters that are likeable, vulnerable, and open to change. The writing flows naturally and the reader can almost hear the music coming off the page.
Excerpt from Another Stupid Love Song by Miranda MacLeod and Em Stevens
The door swung open ever so slowly, and when the woman on the other side was revealed, Max had to blink several times to take in what she was seeing. That was not Cindy.
The young woman had a thin torso, showcased in a crop top and high-waisted jeans. Pert breasts and strong shoulders came next. Light brown skin, cheeks dusted with freckles. Her nose and mouth were familiar, but the mass of dark curls pulled up to showcase an undercut were not. Her youthful face looked like a smudge of a memory, a blurred photograph of someone Max had once known.
Something backfired in Max’s brain as she understood who she was looking at. The cells weren’t just in the nose and freckles but in the way, her lush bottom lip was caught in her teeth—Grace’s nervous tic, passed down to her daughter.
This was the kid. Jade, wasn’t it? An unexpected souvenir from prom night, Jade had been born the year after Grace had graduated high school, right before the band had landed their first big record contract.
Max did some mental math, her heart nearly stopping when she realized it had been twenty-seven years. No wonder there were no tricycles on the lawn. But it was one thing to know it had been twenty-seven years and another thing to see a blaring sign of her own age waiting just inside the house.
“Unacceptable,” Maxine blurted without thinking.
“Excuse me!” Jade’s face burned scarlet. Gray eyes looked down as if trying to search out what about her Maxine had deemed unacceptable. It was a most uncomfortable time to realize the girl—woman, rather—had been blessed with quite a bit more height than Max’s five-foot-four frame.
Max’s cheeks went up in flames. “I wasn’t prepared to see Grace—er, I mean you. It is you, right?”
“That depends on who you think I am?” Her tone was wrapped in barbed wire beneath a veneer of cordiality.
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Bits and Bobs
ISBN number: 9798840606650
Publisher: Indie Author
Miranda MacLeod Online
Em Stevens Online
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