Josh Gabriel is having trouble writing hit music, and if he doesn’t come up with a new hit record, his label is going to drop him. His manager knows about Hope Marcoux-Evans, a discreet professional wingwoman, and he meets Josh in a bar where he knows Hope will be meeting a client, so he can get a look at her. Josh needs a muse, and he is hoping the Hope can help him to find one. However, once Josh sees Hope, he decides that she is his muse, because he is able to write the lyrics to a partially formed song after just one look. Unfortunately, Hope is not interested in being his muse, but will be happy to help him find one, while she is in town temporarily. Josh has a pattern of writing hit songs after a breakup; he believes that the only way he can write songs that his audience and producers want, is if he gets his heart broken. Thus, he is looking for a muse who will break his heart and allow him to take that anguish and turn it into hit music. Of course, he doesn’t let Hope in on this part of his plan, which leads to the rest of the book…And Hope is wary, after catching her fiancé cheating. He was a Broadway star, and she is finished with letting anonymous fans be more important than her in a relationship.
This story held my interest the entire time I was reading it. It’s compelling enough to make readers want to find out how things will get resolved or even if they will get resolved. Hope is trying to navigate through an emotional minefield with a bunch of new half-siblings that she learned about recently. Additionally, her cheating father is getting remarried—again! He wasn’t much of a father to her when she was younger, and he had two families going at the same time, so she doesn’t have a lot of respect for him. But he finally seems happy, he has quit drinking, and his future wife seems like a reasonable sort of woman. There’s a lot of difficult family dynamics happening in the background of this book, and those details add the emotional gravitas that elevate this story into 5-star territory. There is a lot of heart and heat in this book, and these protagonists are flawed, yet doing the best they can. They are both very likable protagonists surrounded by other likable characters. This is a fun, fast-paced story filled with fascinating family dynamics and introspection about the things that really matter.