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Love Me Like a Rock Song: A Novel
Delilah is a lyricist looking for a muse. Emmett is a golem ready to be unmade.
From the bestselling author of Rules for Ghosting comes a soul-stirring, romantic novel about a jilted singer-songwriter, her unexpected hitchhiker, and the road trip of a lifetime.
When Delilah Cohen’s much more famous fiancée leaves her at the altar right before Delilah is supposed to start recording her first solo album, she finds herself with a notebook full of love songs that no longer make sense. Picking up a hitchhiker two hours into the road trip that was supposed to be her honeymoon seems as good a way as any to get her groove back. The last thing she expects is to start falling for her mysterious new passenger, but what’s more inspiring than a rebound with a built-in expiration date?
But there’s more to Emmett than meets the eye. Emmett is a golem, a human-ish being of Jewish mythology who was created from clay to serve a now-deceased master. No longer needed, their final task is to make their way back to the California cave where they were made in order to undo the magic that brought them to life in the first place. But the longer Emmett spends with Delilah—who has plenty of secrets and insecurities of her own—as they cross the country to visit historical queer locales from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, the more their ending feels like something to fight, rather than something set in stone.
As the California coast brings Delilah’s writing deadline—and Emmett's fate—closer with every passing mile, Delilah has to decide just what song it is she wants to write...and whether writing the album of a lifetime is worth losing a love she never expected to find.
Part road trip romcom, part epistolary exploration of America's vibrant queer culture, and all a love letter to the phrase "it's about the journey, not the destination," Love Me Like a Rock Song is a glorious love story about discovering who we are and what we want, and what it means to be human.
From the bestselling author of Rules for Ghosting comes a soul-stirring, romantic novel about a jilted singer-songwriter, her unexpected hitchhiker, and the road trip of a lifetime.
When Delilah Cohen’s much more famous fiancée leaves her at the altar right before Delilah is supposed to start recording her first solo album, she finds herself with a notebook full of love songs that no longer make sense. Picking up a hitchhiker two hours into the road trip that was supposed to be her honeymoon seems as good a way as any to get her groove back. The last thing she expects is to start falling for her mysterious new passenger, but what’s more inspiring than a rebound with a built-in expiration date?
But there’s more to Emmett than meets the eye. Emmett is a golem, a human-ish being of Jewish mythology who was created from clay to serve a now-deceased master. No longer needed, their final task is to make their way back to the California cave where they were made in order to undo the magic that brought them to life in the first place. But the longer Emmett spends with Delilah—who has plenty of secrets and insecurities of her own—as they cross the country to visit historical queer locales from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, the more their ending feels like something to fight, rather than something set in stone.
As the California coast brings Delilah’s writing deadline—and Emmett's fate—closer with every passing mile, Delilah has to decide just what song it is she wants to write...and whether writing the album of a lifetime is worth losing a love she never expected to find.
Part road trip romcom, part epistolary exploration of America's vibrant queer culture, and all a love letter to the phrase "it's about the journey, not the destination," Love Me Like a Rock Song is a glorious love story about discovering who we are and what we want, and what it means to be human.
359 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 25, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I love Shelly Jay Shore's writing and how they always come up with original stories that expertly portray queer Jewish identity.
Singer-songwriter Delilah has just had her wedding called off by her fiancée, Sam. Complicating things is the fact that she and Sam work together as a well-known musical duo. About to record her own solo album (filled with love songs about Sam), Delilah decides to take their planned honeymoon solo and use the time to write a whole new record. As she begins, she picks up a hitchhiker: Emmett. But Emmett just happens to be a golem, a creature from Jewish folklore made out of clay and designed to serve their master. Emmett's master is now dead and they have been ordered to return to their origins (aka disappear).
It sounds wild but Shelly Jay Shore has the ability to make the mystical both believable and fun. The more time Delilah and Emmett spend together, the closer they become. The story explores Delilah's history of mania, deftly looking into how mental illness can affect relationships (and life).
This is such a wonderfully queer story--with many of their road trip stops, the duo explore queer landmarks, meet other queer people, and immerse themselves in queer stories. As they do, Emmett comes to learn more about themself, unearthing an identity hidden by years of serving a harsh master.
Shelly Jay Shore gives us a captivating and complex queer story that explores Jewish identify and folklore, the concept of places as memory, and the importance of self-acceptance. Delilah and Emmett are not your typical couple, but this book benefits from its original storytelling that still captures humanity at its heart.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Dell in return for an unbiased review.
Singer-songwriter Delilah has just had her wedding called off by her fiancée, Sam. Complicating things is the fact that she and Sam work together as a well-known musical duo. About to record her own solo album (filled with love songs about Sam), Delilah decides to take their planned honeymoon solo and use the time to write a whole new record. As she begins, she picks up a hitchhiker: Emmett. But Emmett just happens to be a golem, a creature from Jewish folklore made out of clay and designed to serve their master. Emmett's master is now dead and they have been ordered to return to their origins (aka disappear).
It sounds wild but Shelly Jay Shore has the ability to make the mystical both believable and fun. The more time Delilah and Emmett spend together, the closer they become. The story explores Delilah's history of mania, deftly looking into how mental illness can affect relationships (and life).
This is such a wonderfully queer story--with many of their road trip stops, the duo explore queer landmarks, meet other queer people, and immerse themselves in queer stories. As they do, Emmett comes to learn more about themself, unearthing an identity hidden by years of serving a harsh master.
Shelly Jay Shore gives us a captivating and complex queer story that explores Jewish identify and folklore, the concept of places as memory, and the importance of self-acceptance. Delilah and Emmett are not your typical couple, but this book benefits from its original storytelling that still captures humanity at its heart.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Dell in return for an unbiased review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I liked this one. However, people who read romance and ONLY romance might find that it doesn't slot as neatly into the romance category as usual. This book has a HEAVY emphasis on mental health issues to the point where it sometimes feels almost like a women's fiction genre book. Romance tends to be a little less heavy on real things like suicidal ideation and self-destructive tendencies. However, because I like a wide range of genres, I quite enjoyed this. The things I liked the most were the bits of Jewish culture, the New York culture, and I always love some supernatural beings. Golem feels fresh and original. Also, while the mental health is quite heavy, I think it's worth noting that a believable romance with someone who has a lot going on upstairs can feel very satisfying when the ending is good.
August 29, 2026
i really enjoyed this! i think my biggest critique is i wish it was a lil longer and had like… a little more fleshing out of some stuff? like i wish it had more actual judaism on page (slash i wasn’t obsessed with the “turning away from judaism” vibes that were going on) and more of the songs themselves on page (but also shelly jay shore writing bad songs is worse then writing no songs so i guess this is probably the better alternative) and i also feel like i was just noticing summarization a lot more then i normally do? so either there was a lot of it and/or it wasn’t written as smoothly as it could have been and/or some scenes i actually wanted to see were being summarized.
all that to say… this was a really fun book and the road trip elements were super great. i enjoyed both POVs and thought they had unique stuff going on. i didn’t necessarily ship the romance but it was sweet. the jewish and queer textual stuff was very cool. overall really enjoyed! i think i just would have written it slightly differently which is maybe on me…
all that to say… this was a really fun book and the road trip elements were super great. i enjoyed both POVs and thought they had unique stuff going on. i didn’t necessarily ship the romance but it was sweet. the jewish and queer textual stuff was very cool. overall really enjoyed! i think i just would have written it slightly differently which is maybe on me…
September 13, 2026
After reading 'Rules for Ghosting'my stingy, hard-to-please heart was so moved by the writing and story that I gave it five stars. When I saw the announcement for this book, I absolutely knew I would be reading it and gosh I'm so glad I did.
I love how Shelly Jay Shore incorporates aspects of Jewish lore and culture into contemporary queerness in their stories and in 'Love Me Like A Rock Song', the way they weaved the lore of the gollum into Emmett's complicated relationship with their gender. It was very interesting.
Delilah as a character was very compelling, I do not think I've enjoyed a character in a romance as much as I enjoyed reading about her (even more cause she's such a well written bisexual character and we don't get much of those that aren't steeped in monosexuality).I truly can't wait to read this again.
My obvious struggle to string words together for this review is only a testament to how much I enjoyed it, thank you Ballantine for the arc in exchange for an honest review.
I love how Shelly Jay Shore incorporates aspects of Jewish lore and culture into contemporary queerness in their stories and in 'Love Me Like A Rock Song', the way they weaved the lore of the gollum into Emmett's complicated relationship with their gender. It was very interesting.
Delilah as a character was very compelling, I do not think I've enjoyed a character in a romance as much as I enjoyed reading about her (even more cause she's such a well written bisexual character and we don't get much of those that aren't steeped in monosexuality).I truly can't wait to read this again.
My obvious struggle to string words together for this review is only a testament to how much I enjoyed it, thank you Ballantine for the arc in exchange for an honest review.
September 18, 2026
(Bingo: contemporary)
I loved this more than I can say, I’m so glad I saved it for my final SBTB Bingo square so I can end on a high note. What a great book, what a lovely story.
I loved this more than I can say, I’m so glad I saved it for my final SBTB Bingo square so I can end on a high note. What a great book, what a lovely story.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
4 stars
I enjoyed Shore's first book so much that I jumped right into this one without so much as a glance at the synopsis. Readers in the know won't be surprised at *my* surprise when I discovered the golem inclusive romance within. Hahaha! Incredible!
Readers first meet Delilah right when she's been left at the altar. The ex-fiancee is not only a romantic attachment; these two are also musically and professionally intertwined. They're really giving "it's complicated" in many ways. I was happy to notice early on that this wasn't going to be a race back to my terrible partner who publicly disrespected me kind of jam. It's something else entirely.
Delilah's way of managing her heartbreak - which turns out to be at least as focused on her professional situation as her former almost wife - is to go on her intended honeymoon alone. She's only a solo act for a hot second, though, because she picks up the strangest hitchhiker of all time (whom I love and is a favorite part of the book): a golem named Emmett. Again, having not looked at the synopsis at all, this came as a, well, shock. But it turned out to be an excellent surprise.
This book is a love story - a pretty untraditional one in some ways - that highlights the importance of Ru's infinite wisdom: that "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love someone else?" Mother says; we listen. Delilah and Emmett are on board.
I loved how this was both strange and moving. It's the kind of book that I'm thinking more and more about and appreciating even more in retrospect. I'm looking forward to recommending this and definitely to chatting about it with my more expansive bookish buddies.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and Jordelle Beja at Ballantine, Bantam, Dell for this widget, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I enjoyed Shore's first book so much that I jumped right into this one without so much as a glance at the synopsis. Readers in the know won't be surprised at *my* surprise when I discovered the golem inclusive romance within. Hahaha! Incredible!
Readers first meet Delilah right when she's been left at the altar. The ex-fiancee is not only a romantic attachment; these two are also musically and professionally intertwined. They're really giving "it's complicated" in many ways. I was happy to notice early on that this wasn't going to be a race back to my terrible partner who publicly disrespected me kind of jam. It's something else entirely.
Delilah's way of managing her heartbreak - which turns out to be at least as focused on her professional situation as her former almost wife - is to go on her intended honeymoon alone. She's only a solo act for a hot second, though, because she picks up the strangest hitchhiker of all time (whom I love and is a favorite part of the book): a golem named Emmett. Again, having not looked at the synopsis at all, this came as a, well, shock. But it turned out to be an excellent surprise.
This book is a love story - a pretty untraditional one in some ways - that highlights the importance of Ru's infinite wisdom: that "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love someone else?" Mother says; we listen. Delilah and Emmett are on board.
I loved how this was both strange and moving. It's the kind of book that I'm thinking more and more about and appreciating even more in retrospect. I'm looking forward to recommending this and definitely to chatting about it with my more expansive bookish buddies.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and Jordelle Beja at Ballantine, Bantam, Dell for this widget, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
2.5 This book was unfortunately a disappointment for me. I felt drawn in and compelled by the characters but I felt that the way the book ended really didn’t work for me. I can’t really discuss this without spoiling the entire thing, so fair warning that’s what I’m about to do.
I feel like if the story is going to be about Delilah caring so much about writing this CD that she’s willing to not even try to save Emmet when she’s first looking at the journals, then that betrayal has to count for more than a third act breakup that’s solved by the grand gesture at the end. Using Emmet as a thing that she can get something out of feels like such a huge deal generally, and specifically in the case of a being that had been used for other people’s goals for their entire existence? Having the twist in the end be that somehow those songs were actually the thing that healed them and this somehow makes up for the lies just made no sense to me. Speaking of making no sense, I didn’t really understand why Delilah didn’t try to look for any solution AND write her songs in the first place? Especially when the solution that is found at the end of the book seems trivial. I don’t know, I feel like there were a lot of good pieces in this puzzle and I really appreciated the ambition of the story it was trying to tell, but the ultimate shape was too off-putting for me to get beyond.
I feel like if the story is going to be about Delilah caring so much about writing this CD that she’s willing to not even try to save Emmet when she’s first looking at the journals, then that betrayal has to count for more than a third act breakup that’s solved by the grand gesture at the end. Using Emmet as a thing that she can get something out of feels like such a huge deal generally, and specifically in the case of a being that had been used for other people’s goals for their entire existence? Having the twist in the end be that somehow those songs were actually the thing that healed them and this somehow makes up for the lies just made no sense to me. Speaking of making no sense, I didn’t really understand why Delilah didn’t try to look for any solution AND write her songs in the first place? Especially when the solution that is found at the end of the book seems trivial. I don’t know, I feel like there were a lot of good pieces in this puzzle and I really appreciated the ambition of the story it was trying to tell, but the ultimate shape was too off-putting for me to get beyond.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Releases 8/25/26.
Heat Index: 5.5/10
The Review:
Love Me Like a Rock Song is truly unique. A celebrity(ish? She's famous, but she's less famous without her stupid dumb ex) heroine! With bipolar disorder! A roadtrip! A golem! Similarly as they did with Rules for Ghosting—which I adored—Shelly Jay Shore creates something gentle yet high stakes, with a teasing sort of humor and characters who are... complicated. Like, for all intents and purposes, Emmett is headed to their doom for much of this novel. But just because you're facing certain doom doesn't mean you can't take a detour to see the country and fall in love with a woman whose life just blew up, right? Right.
And this is a romance novel. With all the conventions. So do with that doom what you will.
It's hard, though, to write a romance novel about two people in such emotionally vulnerable positions. Delilah literally begins the book less than 12 hours after getting a note from her fiancee Sam indicating that a) the wedding, which was supposed to take place that day, is off and b) there's someone else. Essentially, Delilah loses not only her relationship but the artistic identity into which she's fit herself for years. In the public eye! Like, a lot of people see Delilah in this specific way. And she owes her label an album.
Pair this with the aforementioned bipolar disorder, and it would be very easy to Delilah's intense vulnerability to make romance uncomfy. And honestly, I can be down for an uncomfy romance—often—but tonally, this is a healing, hurt/comfort type of romcom. That's why I think it's so important that Emmett is really even more vulnerable. Also grieving, also figuring out their identity, also finding a place outside a person who literally made them in a way Sam—the shitty ex—metaphorically made Delilah.
Emmett's character is so special. Beginning the book with he/him pronouns because they were literally made to replace a lost son, they let those slip away in a way that's so natural and so easily informs the reader. As they claim more of their own self and own their body, their physical appearance begins to change. They soften their features, even as the magic that made and now curses them slowly returns them to the earth from which they were created. It has a haunting effect, and I just really appreciated the way Shore used symbolism to weave in Emmett's gender evolution, and how it parallels their independence. So many books feel like they word vomit everything over us right now. This novel doesn't spell it out for you. You have to feel it. Which makes sense, because it's a book about music, too!
Did I love this as much as I loved Rules for Ghosting? I can't say it's quite there for me, and that may be because I found Emmett's journey a little more compelling than Delilah's, which is something you've seen a little more of in romances centered on musicians. However, I did deeply like it, and found the story so cool, so ambitious, and a great example of how the fantastical doesn't have to explained to fit into our world and relate to our experiences.
The Review:
You truly won't read anything like Love Me Like a Rock Song, and that's a great thing. Part exploration of identity, part love story, a little weird and a lot heartache. I would definitely recommend it, especially if you want to switch up your romance reading routine.
Thanks to Dell and NetGalley for giving me a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Heat Index: 5.5/10
The Review:
Love Me Like a Rock Song is truly unique. A celebrity(ish? She's famous, but she's less famous without her stupid dumb ex) heroine! With bipolar disorder! A roadtrip! A golem! Similarly as they did with Rules for Ghosting—which I adored—Shelly Jay Shore creates something gentle yet high stakes, with a teasing sort of humor and characters who are... complicated. Like, for all intents and purposes, Emmett is headed to their doom for much of this novel. But just because you're facing certain doom doesn't mean you can't take a detour to see the country and fall in love with a woman whose life just blew up, right? Right.
And this is a romance novel. With all the conventions. So do with that doom what you will.
It's hard, though, to write a romance novel about two people in such emotionally vulnerable positions. Delilah literally begins the book less than 12 hours after getting a note from her fiancee Sam indicating that a) the wedding, which was supposed to take place that day, is off and b) there's someone else. Essentially, Delilah loses not only her relationship but the artistic identity into which she's fit herself for years. In the public eye! Like, a lot of people see Delilah in this specific way. And she owes her label an album.
Pair this with the aforementioned bipolar disorder, and it would be very easy to Delilah's intense vulnerability to make romance uncomfy. And honestly, I can be down for an uncomfy romance—often—but tonally, this is a healing, hurt/comfort type of romcom. That's why I think it's so important that Emmett is really even more vulnerable. Also grieving, also figuring out their identity, also finding a place outside a person who literally made them in a way Sam—the shitty ex—metaphorically made Delilah.
Emmett's character is so special. Beginning the book with he/him pronouns because they were literally made to replace a lost son, they let those slip away in a way that's so natural and so easily informs the reader. As they claim more of their own self and own their body, their physical appearance begins to change. They soften their features, even as the magic that made and now curses them slowly returns them to the earth from which they were created. It has a haunting effect, and I just really appreciated the way Shore used symbolism to weave in Emmett's gender evolution, and how it parallels their independence. So many books feel like they word vomit everything over us right now. This novel doesn't spell it out for you. You have to feel it. Which makes sense, because it's a book about music, too!
Did I love this as much as I loved Rules for Ghosting? I can't say it's quite there for me, and that may be because I found Emmett's journey a little more compelling than Delilah's, which is something you've seen a little more of in romances centered on musicians. However, I did deeply like it, and found the story so cool, so ambitious, and a great example of how the fantastical doesn't have to explained to fit into our world and relate to our experiences.
The Review:
You truly won't read anything like Love Me Like a Rock Song, and that's a great thing. Part exploration of identity, part love story, a little weird and a lot heartache. I would definitely recommend it, especially if you want to switch up your romance reading routine.
Thanks to Dell and NetGalley for giving me a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
3.5⭐
(+) :
- This was a really interesting take on the Jewish folklore of the Golem. I like that it goes into details on the different evolutions and paths that the mythos has/had taken and the way that Emmett is experiencing it for themselves.
- I really liked seeing Emmett's gender recognition in real time. The gentle update of using he/him to they/them pronouns in real time on the page was just lovely.
- Ruth is great. I love Ruth and I love seeing the care and love that she and Emmett have for each other, despite their circumstances as siblings.
- Reading about real queer historical landmarks (shoutout especially to Nobody’s Darling) was fun. It also didn’t feel TOO hamfisted.
- I like this cover. I don’t necessarily love it and I don’t think it screams “Adult Romance”, but it does give road trip vibes.
- Title is fine. Is she writing rock songs? No. But I don’t think Indie Pop Song would really flow.
(-) :
- There's something about Shelly Jay Shore’s writing that always leaves me feeling a bit...dry. I like the characters and the stories but the romances always feel like the wrong direction for the story. Or rather BEING a romance. I had this feeling with ‘Rules for Ghosting’, too. I felt it less with this book, but I wanted this book to be more about Delilah’s journey for self-rediscovery than through the lens of another person.
- I think I was waiting for awhile for how Delilah was going to talk about seeing herself as her own Golem and we never got that and I wish we did. Especially because she still ends up just using Emmett’s story for her album (this is not a spoiler, with the setlists at the start of the chapters).
- The podcast/interview snippets at the start of chapters were far too long, in my opinion. I barely read them or even skimmed them in the end.
- We don't ever really get a closed circle on Emmett's religious identity and that felt odd. Or at least disappointing. Especially because it is a point of HIS self-discovery to know what part of the religious identity is his and which was just bequeathed onto him by Jacob.
- Listen i get the authors note for CW at the beginning but I fully thought suicide was going to be far more prevalent. Emmett's journey wasnt a suicide. It was basically a murder. And Delilah had far fewer suicidal thoughts than I think Warrentef that level of caution. I’m not saying this CW was unnecessary (it still definitely was) or that I wanted more self-harm talk, but Delilah’s discussion of her suicide attempt was more wrapped up in her discussions of her own mania and I wish there had been more of an allusion to that in the CW itself (because to me, that can be as triggering to experience).
(?) :
- Dear God, as a genderqueer person do I wish I could subtlety alter my appearance on a whim
WILL I READ THE NEXT ONE? : As a queer Jewish person, yes. I don’t think that Shelly Jay Shore’s writing is for me necessarily, but I do appreciate seeing aspects of my identity on the page.
(HOW LONG) DO I THINK THEY’LL STAY TOGETHER? : I have…no clue. I genuinely cannot even guess. They barely even seem together by the end of the book (which is okay, they are together, it’s just a very weird situation with Delilah’s fame and Emmett’s family and whole being clay Pinocchio and all).
*Thank you to Dell & Netgalley for providing this ARC!
SIMILAR BOOKS :
- 'Magical Meet Cute' by Jean Meltzer
- 'A Shot in the Dark' by Victoria Lee
- 'Soon by You' by Dahlia Adler
- 'Mrs. Nash's Ashes' by Sarah Adler
(+) :
- This was a really interesting take on the Jewish folklore of the Golem. I like that it goes into details on the different evolutions and paths that the mythos has/had taken and the way that Emmett is experiencing it for themselves.
- I really liked seeing Emmett's gender recognition in real time. The gentle update of using he/him to they/them pronouns in real time on the page was just lovely.
- Ruth is great. I love Ruth and I love seeing the care and love that she and Emmett have for each other, despite their circumstances as siblings.
- Reading about real queer historical landmarks (shoutout especially to Nobody’s Darling) was fun. It also didn’t feel TOO hamfisted.
- I like this cover. I don’t necessarily love it and I don’t think it screams “Adult Romance”, but it does give road trip vibes.
- Title is fine. Is she writing rock songs? No. But I don’t think Indie Pop Song would really flow.
(-) :
- There's something about Shelly Jay Shore’s writing that always leaves me feeling a bit...dry. I like the characters and the stories but the romances always feel like the wrong direction for the story. Or rather BEING a romance. I had this feeling with ‘Rules for Ghosting’, too. I felt it less with this book, but I wanted this book to be more about Delilah’s journey for self-rediscovery than through the lens of another person.
- I think I was waiting for awhile for how Delilah was going to talk about seeing herself as her own Golem and we never got that and I wish we did. Especially because she still ends up just using Emmett’s story for her album (this is not a spoiler, with the setlists at the start of the chapters).
- The podcast/interview snippets at the start of chapters were far too long, in my opinion. I barely read them or even skimmed them in the end.
- We don't ever really get a closed circle on Emmett's religious identity and that felt odd. Or at least disappointing. Especially because it is a point of HIS self-discovery to know what part of the religious identity is his and which was just bequeathed onto him by Jacob.
- Listen i get the authors note for CW at the beginning but I fully thought suicide was going to be far more prevalent. Emmett's journey wasnt a suicide. It was basically a murder. And Delilah had far fewer suicidal thoughts than I think Warrentef that level of caution. I’m not saying this CW was unnecessary (it still definitely was) or that I wanted more self-harm talk, but Delilah’s discussion of her suicide attempt was more wrapped up in her discussions of her own mania and I wish there had been more of an allusion to that in the CW itself (because to me, that can be as triggering to experience).
(?) :
- Dear God, as a genderqueer person do I wish I could subtlety alter my appearance on a whim
WILL I READ THE NEXT ONE? : As a queer Jewish person, yes. I don’t think that Shelly Jay Shore’s writing is for me necessarily, but I do appreciate seeing aspects of my identity on the page.
(HOW LONG) DO I THINK THEY’LL STAY TOGETHER? : I have…no clue. I genuinely cannot even guess. They barely even seem together by the end of the book (which is okay, they are together, it’s just a very weird situation with Delilah’s fame and Emmett’s family and whole being clay Pinocchio and all).
*Thank you to Dell & Netgalley for providing this ARC!
SIMILAR BOOKS :
- 'Magical Meet Cute' by Jean Meltzer
- 'A Shot in the Dark' by Victoria Lee
- 'Soon by You' by Dahlia Adler
- 'Mrs. Nash's Ashes' by Sarah Adler
Want to Read
September 9, 2026 HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS SOONER?! I READ SHELLY'S EMAILS!!! AH, THIS WILL BE SO GOOD!!!!!
September 11, 2026
This was my 36th book I’ve read this year which feels very fitting!!!!! I think I loved this even more than Rules for Ghosting and I am so so so so so so excited for Shore to keep writing cuz I just know they’re gonna keep killing it
August 27, 2026
Love Me Like a Rock Song had me hooked immediately. Because I was such a huge fan of Rules for Ghosting, I didn't really read the synopsis of this one and just jumped in without much information and immediately fell in love. This book is steeped in history, both Jewish and Queer, and packs an emotional punch, but the real genius of Shelly Jay Shore is balancing all of that and somehow being an easy read.
Delilah is a songwriter who was left the morning of her wedding to her longtime writing partner. Today she is leaving for her honeymoon roadtrip solo while also needing to rewrite her solo album that she is recording in two weeks. As she gets ready to take off, she meets Emmett who is on their cross country quest. Emmett is hiding the fact that they are a Golem heading to Los Angeles to destroy themselves after the death of their creator.
I love the way Shelly Jay Shore shares so much culture and history in their books, with deep emotionally charged stories, and yet they are still a total delight to read. I highly recommend this book and cannot wait to read whatever they come up with next!
Delilah is a songwriter who was left the morning of her wedding to her longtime writing partner. Today she is leaving for her honeymoon roadtrip solo while also needing to rewrite her solo album that she is recording in two weeks. As she gets ready to take off, she meets Emmett who is on their cross country quest. Emmett is hiding the fact that they are a Golem heading to Los Angeles to destroy themselves after the death of their creator.
I love the way Shelly Jay Shore shares so much culture and history in their books, with deep emotionally charged stories, and yet they are still a total delight to read. I highly recommend this book and cannot wait to read whatever they come up with next!
August 21, 2026
4.5/5
This book has quite a unique premise. Delilah is a famous musician that just got dumped by her fiancé the day before her wedding day and decides to take a roadtrip across America to heal her broken heart and look for inspiration. During her trip she picks up a hitchhiker that is more than appears. Emmett is a golem and is on a trip to complete his final task. These two slowly get to know each other and of course they fall in love. However, Emmett has limited time on this earth and I couldn’t stop reading to figure out how things would end!
I think the less you know the better going into this book. If you liked the first book by this author, you will like this one as well. It felt like a slice of life and mediation on what it’s to be queer and live your truth.
This book has quite a unique premise. Delilah is a famous musician that just got dumped by her fiancé the day before her wedding day and decides to take a roadtrip across America to heal her broken heart and look for inspiration. During her trip she picks up a hitchhiker that is more than appears. Emmett is a golem and is on a trip to complete his final task. These two slowly get to know each other and of course they fall in love. However, Emmett has limited time on this earth and I couldn’t stop reading to figure out how things would end!
I think the less you know the better going into this book. If you liked the first book by this author, you will like this one as well. It felt like a slice of life and mediation on what it’s to be queer and live your truth.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I really wanted to like this since it had a great concept, but the execution was disappointing.
It felt like the actual mysticism of Emmet being a golem played no part in this book. It’s annoying to add magic but not have the magic be plot significant. Also there’s no explanation of how they’re a golem but seemingly aged like a human their whole life?
I did not like the writing style. So many tumblr one liners that were supposed to be funny but just made the book immediately feel dated. The info dumps started getting very tired very fast and were not inserted in a natural way at all. If you need to have several fake podcast excerpts to include all the queer theory you want to include, maybe you should dial it back a bit.
Delilah was a hot mess. Emmet was a cutie though. Weird as hell to have their first kiss happen off the page. Why am I as the reader not witnessing one of the pivotal moments in a romance? Their whole romance just didn’t work for me. Literally the only reason they got together was because Delilah was in a super low place and Emmet was in close proximity. It maybe would’ve been more believable if Delilah and Sam had broken up months ago but Delilah was still going on her honeymoon trip and then the events of the book happen.
The whole Sam thing barely made sense. Why would Sam dump Delilah and then be doing stuff to try to get her back? But then act like a bitch (in my opinion at least) when they meet again and tell Delilah how much their relationship didn’t work. Lowkey wanted Sam to die but this wasn’t that kind of book.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book.
It felt like the actual mysticism of Emmet being a golem played no part in this book. It’s annoying to add magic but not have the magic be plot significant. Also there’s no explanation of how they’re a golem but seemingly aged like a human their whole life?
I did not like the writing style. So many tumblr one liners that were supposed to be funny but just made the book immediately feel dated. The info dumps started getting very tired very fast and were not inserted in a natural way at all. If you need to have several fake podcast excerpts to include all the queer theory you want to include, maybe you should dial it back a bit.
Delilah was a hot mess. Emmet was a cutie though. Weird as hell to have their first kiss happen off the page. Why am I as the reader not witnessing one of the pivotal moments in a romance? Their whole romance just didn’t work for me. Literally the only reason they got together was because Delilah was in a super low place and Emmet was in close proximity. It maybe would’ve been more believable if Delilah and Sam had broken up months ago but Delilah was still going on her honeymoon trip and then the events of the book happen.
The whole Sam thing barely made sense. Why would Sam dump Delilah and then be doing stuff to try to get her back? But then act like a bitch (in my opinion at least) when they meet again and tell Delilah how much their relationship didn’t work. Lowkey wanted Sam to die but this wasn’t that kind of book.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Please Do Not Turn Your Golem Into Content
Shelly Jay Shore’s “Love Me Like a Rock Song” Has Great Fun With the Artist-Muse Romance Until Inspiration Starts Looking Suspiciously Like Extraction
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | August 11th, 2026
Delilah Cohen needs a muse, which is a dangerous role to assign another person. In Shelly Jay Shore’s “Love Me Like a Rock Song,” the newly jilted singer-songwriter has two weeks to replace an album’s worth of love songs before she is due in a Los Angeles studio. She also has no appetite for sitting still long enough to feel what has happened to her. So she takes the honeymoon road trip her fiancée has just vacated and heads west in a turquoise Volkswagen camper. Two hours in, she meets Emmett, a beautiful stranger who saves her from walking into traffic. Delilah sees inspiration. The complication is that Emmett has spent their entire existence being made useful.
Even before the wedding collapses, usefulness has become Delilah’s professional grammar. Sam Knight, her much more famous fiancée, is the recognizable half of their musical duo, Lilac+Crow; Delilah supplies many of the songs Sam gets to stand in front of. Sam’s family connections opened doors, and Delilah has spent years treating her own talent like a clerical error in somebody else’s contract. Sam has already released solo records; Delilah has not. Before Lilac+Crow, Delilah was good enough to ghostwrite for other performers and bad enough at valuing that work to need a manager to tell her what it cost. Her first solo album was supposed to correct more than a billing imbalance. Instead, the breakup makes its love songs unusable and sends her toward California with a studio date, an empty notebook and the suspicion that Sam may have been right about how little she can do alone.
More urgently, Emmett is traveling west under a sentence Delilah does not yet understand. They are a golem, formed from inherited clay by Jacob Abrams after the death of his son Isaac. Jacob made Emmett partly in Isaac’s image and set rules for nearly every part of their existence. Before dying, he issued one final command: return to the California cave where they were created and unmake themself. Emmett can think, fear, love and want, but cannot simply ignore an order from their maker. Delilah’s invitation offers a loophole. Jacob specified the destination, not the route. Emmett gets in the van.
Emmett carries the past in a more literal form than most protagonists have to. The clay remembers earlier golems; Emmett remembers through it. Jacob’s grief, family history and Jewish tradition are therefore not impurities waiting to be washed off once someone hands them the correct vocabulary for liberation. Emmett does not need a self untouched by what came before. They need what came before to lose its veto. The distinction matters because Jacob has confused making Emmett with owning the terms of Emmett’s continued existence, right down to deciding when that existence should end.
The same confusion returns in a smaller, reparable form through Delilah. She recognizes the violence in Jacob treating a conscious being as an instrument and begins introducing Emmett to preferences made radical only because they were forbidden: pronouns, clothes, friends, food, touch, sex, queer company. Then Emmett lets her read the family archive because both of them hope it contains a loophole in Jacob’s command. Delilah hears something else in those histories. Songs. She begins turning confidences offered in the hope of survival into material that might save her album. Her breach of trust is nowhere near Jacob’s lifelong control or final death sentence, but the resemblance is precisely what stings. Inspiration sounds prettier than extraction, but the difference is not always determined by the person holding the pen.
Roscoe carries them through queer bookstores, archives, campgrounds, clubs, museums, hot springs and galleries, each stop giving Emmett some ordinary possibility Jacob neglected to mention. A pronoun pin can matter as much as a spectacular view when even the grammar of one’s self has previously belonged to somebody else. Delilah, meanwhile, keeps finding lives preserved in paper, music and public history, evidence that her own catastrophe is neither unprecedented nor the end of the available world. Occasionally this itinerary acquires the cheerful efficiency of a syllabus with snacks. Underneath it, though, three deadlines keep tightening: the recording session, California, the stone spreading across Emmett’s body. Delilah’s album becomes more completely about Emmett as Emmett becomes less able to survive the trip. When that contradiction finally splits them apart, Roscoe dies on the roadside too. The van has impeccable dramatic timing.
In the track list, Delilah receives something Emmett does not yet possess: numbered space. SIDE A and SIDE B contain her twenty-eight “Tracks”; Emmett appears in “Instrumentals” and “Interludes,” with a Coda and Outro near the end. Delilah gets the songs. Emmett gets the spaces between them. Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit from the Goon Squad” takes musical architecture into far stranger formal territory, but Shore’s quieter arrangement suits this book. Someone whose existence has always been fitted inside another person’s plan first appears inside somebody else’s album. Social posts, publicity statements, archival scraps and family records keep interrupting the narrative as well, apt for a story in which experience is forever being photographed, archived, promoted, inherited or turned into art before the person inside it has finished deciding what happened.
Prose is where Shore loosens the screws. Delilah’s close-third narration is quick, profane, funny, reference-hungry and companionable to the point of crowding. An observation becomes a joke, the joke opens a memory, the memory triggers anxiety, and the anxiety acquires a cultural reference or psychiatric self-check before the sentence has quite remembered where it began. Her mind annotates itself. Emmett’s sections lower the volume. Nail polish, a pronoun, a kiss or a place to sleep can acquire the dignity of an event because the ordinary entitlement to preference is still new. Shore does not make Emmett sound otherworldly so much as newly attentive to permissions everybody around them has forgotten to notice.
As a songwriter, Delilah rarely allows experience to remain experience for long. An archive becomes lyrics. Heartbreak becomes an album concept. Humiliation becomes a joke. Desire becomes evidence. That reflex is part of what makes her talented. It also helps her betray Emmett. A person able to turn almost anything into a song can fail to notice when the song is taking more than someone meant to give. Shore has scenes capable of carrying this without assistance, then often refuses to leave them alone. Feelings are dramatized and afterward interpreted; motifs return and are introduced to themselves. The house is sound. Its owner keeps showing us which walls bear weight.
Past lives reach Delilah first as paper. At the Lesbian Herstory Archives, she reads letters and poems left by women who desired, sulked, joked, traveled, kept secrets and bothered to write one another down. She cries. Then, because she is Delilah, she starts taking notes. Emmett finds related evidence elsewhere: a pronoun pin, drag, queer elders, strangers who become friends. Jacob’s family records offer another archive entirely, one that can wound, bind and eventually disclose the wording that saves Emmett. Shore is best here when the past remains material rather than moral – a page, a fragment, inherited clay, a sentence somebody failed to phrase carefully enough.
Against this, romance never performs the cheap miracle of curing Delilah. Bipolar disorder remains part of the logistics of her adulthood: medication, therapy, safety plans, manic episodes, depressive crashes, previous attempts, and the exhausting business of deciding whether an impulse is spontaneity or danger with better styling. Delilah sometimes has to argue herself into remaining alive. Emmett desperately wants life and has been ordered toward death. The conditions are not interchangeable, and Shore does not treat them as if they were. Delilah has a freedom she cannot always feel; Emmett has a desire they cannot reliably act on. Their love solves neither problem. It does make each harder to lie about.
Delilah’s history with Sam is messier than the abandoned wedding initially promises. Sam knew her safety plan, cared for her through frightening periods of illness and shared years of real tenderness with her. Sam loved her. Sam also made her smaller. She benefited from remaining the brighter star in Lilac+Crow and eventually admits that jealousy helped motivate her resistance to Delilah’s solo career. Their confrontation arrives with almost suspicious efficiency, everyone suddenly blessed with excellent retrospective vocabulary, but the mixed truth underneath it is worth keeping. Sam’s care was real; it was not an alibi. Delilah spent years arranging herself around Sam’s preferences and calling the arrangement her own desire.
It is when Emmett discovers the album that Shore’s argument stops being flattering to its heroine. They have answered painful questions because they believe Delilah is searching Jacob’s archive for a way to save them. She is searching. She is also hearing choruses. Jacob created Emmett as an answer to grief and assumed creation gave him rights over the created. Delilah has done nothing comparable in scale or violence, but she has taken a person trying to escape being instrumental and made that person instrumental to her art. Worse, she understands exactly why this should matter. The betrayal gives the romance a useful abrasion. Delilah cannot love her way out of having used somebody.
More often than the book needs, however, Shore explains what the scenes have already established. Want, permission, freedom, realness and selfhood recur until motifs begin arriving with name tags. Delilah worries again about being too difficult to love, about whether spontaneity is mania, about whether Sam’s access rather than her talent built the career, about whether her own pain is interesting enough to become art. Some repetition belongs to the loops of an anxious mind. Some simply belongs to a novel unwilling to trust silence. The same problem reaches the dialogue: people regularly achieve remarkable fluency about the exact shape of their wounds. Shore’s scenes are often subtler than the explanations following them.
In Helene Wecker’s “The Golem and the Jinni,” a golem severed from an intended master must also discover what existence can mean without the person for whom she was made, though Wecker distributes that problem through immigrant history and communal life. Casey McQuiston’s “One Last Stop” sits closer to Shore’s romantic register, making a queer happily-ever-after depend on solving an impossible supernatural condition rather than declaring sufficient devotion. Shore adds a rougher complication: the beloved who needs saving is also the story the artist wants to sell. Emmett is not simply the magical lover. They are the person Delilah must learn not to turn into an answer.
Toward the end, freedom arrives as an order. Delilah discovers that Jacob’s children can inherit his authority, and Ruth reaches Emmett just before they complete the command killing them. She orders Emmett to live, make their own decisions and obey no one unless obedience is freely chosen. Compulsory obedience is abolished by one final act of compulsory obedience. The loophole is almost too elegant for the problem it resolves. Its emotional force comes from what the magic does not settle. Saving Emmett does not entitle Delilah to forgiveness. It does not restore the romance. It does not give her permission to release the album. Emmett must decide those things after refusal has become possible.
Rather than stop with a body restored from stone, Shore jumps forward a year and gives Emmett something less spectacular: ordinary commitments that do not revolve around Delilah. They live in Brooklyn, work in a bookstore, study theology, queer theory, mysticism, art history and gender, make charcoal drawings and rebuild family relationships of their own. Delilah’s solo album, “Traveling Golem: A Love Story,” has succeeded, but she still has therapy appointments and dark periods. They remain a couple without treating proximity as proof. Emmett repairs Roscoe for another trip and, this time, drives. The platinum plaque is pleasant. The separate apartment matters more. Freedom would mean very little if the reward for acquiring it were simply a nicer master.
One habit keeps “Love Me Like a Rock Song” from reaching the level of its own best design: Shore too often explains an idea after she has already found the scene, object or formal choice that makes it clear. That keeps the novel at 82/100, or 4/5 stars, rather than higher. But its central trouble is worth the mileage. Love does not stop being possessive merely because possession is affectionate, and a person does not become free by finding someone kinder to belong to. By the last pages Roscoe has been repaired, Emmett is driving, Delilah has opened a fresh notebook, and neither is fleeing a wedding, a command or a death sentence. The fastest route is available. They take the scenic one because nobody has told them not to.
Shelly Jay Shore’s “Love Me Like a Rock Song” Has Great Fun With the Artist-Muse Romance Until Inspiration Starts Looking Suspiciously Like Extraction
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | August 11th, 2026
Delilah Cohen needs a muse, which is a dangerous role to assign another person. In Shelly Jay Shore’s “Love Me Like a Rock Song,” the newly jilted singer-songwriter has two weeks to replace an album’s worth of love songs before she is due in a Los Angeles studio. She also has no appetite for sitting still long enough to feel what has happened to her. So she takes the honeymoon road trip her fiancée has just vacated and heads west in a turquoise Volkswagen camper. Two hours in, she meets Emmett, a beautiful stranger who saves her from walking into traffic. Delilah sees inspiration. The complication is that Emmett has spent their entire existence being made useful.
Even before the wedding collapses, usefulness has become Delilah’s professional grammar. Sam Knight, her much more famous fiancée, is the recognizable half of their musical duo, Lilac+Crow; Delilah supplies many of the songs Sam gets to stand in front of. Sam’s family connections opened doors, and Delilah has spent years treating her own talent like a clerical error in somebody else’s contract. Sam has already released solo records; Delilah has not. Before Lilac+Crow, Delilah was good enough to ghostwrite for other performers and bad enough at valuing that work to need a manager to tell her what it cost. Her first solo album was supposed to correct more than a billing imbalance. Instead, the breakup makes its love songs unusable and sends her toward California with a studio date, an empty notebook and the suspicion that Sam may have been right about how little she can do alone.
More urgently, Emmett is traveling west under a sentence Delilah does not yet understand. They are a golem, formed from inherited clay by Jacob Abrams after the death of his son Isaac. Jacob made Emmett partly in Isaac’s image and set rules for nearly every part of their existence. Before dying, he issued one final command: return to the California cave where they were created and unmake themself. Emmett can think, fear, love and want, but cannot simply ignore an order from their maker. Delilah’s invitation offers a loophole. Jacob specified the destination, not the route. Emmett gets in the van.
Emmett carries the past in a more literal form than most protagonists have to. The clay remembers earlier golems; Emmett remembers through it. Jacob’s grief, family history and Jewish tradition are therefore not impurities waiting to be washed off once someone hands them the correct vocabulary for liberation. Emmett does not need a self untouched by what came before. They need what came before to lose its veto. The distinction matters because Jacob has confused making Emmett with owning the terms of Emmett’s continued existence, right down to deciding when that existence should end.
The same confusion returns in a smaller, reparable form through Delilah. She recognizes the violence in Jacob treating a conscious being as an instrument and begins introducing Emmett to preferences made radical only because they were forbidden: pronouns, clothes, friends, food, touch, sex, queer company. Then Emmett lets her read the family archive because both of them hope it contains a loophole in Jacob’s command. Delilah hears something else in those histories. Songs. She begins turning confidences offered in the hope of survival into material that might save her album. Her breach of trust is nowhere near Jacob’s lifelong control or final death sentence, but the resemblance is precisely what stings. Inspiration sounds prettier than extraction, but the difference is not always determined by the person holding the pen.
Roscoe carries them through queer bookstores, archives, campgrounds, clubs, museums, hot springs and galleries, each stop giving Emmett some ordinary possibility Jacob neglected to mention. A pronoun pin can matter as much as a spectacular view when even the grammar of one’s self has previously belonged to somebody else. Delilah, meanwhile, keeps finding lives preserved in paper, music and public history, evidence that her own catastrophe is neither unprecedented nor the end of the available world. Occasionally this itinerary acquires the cheerful efficiency of a syllabus with snacks. Underneath it, though, three deadlines keep tightening: the recording session, California, the stone spreading across Emmett’s body. Delilah’s album becomes more completely about Emmett as Emmett becomes less able to survive the trip. When that contradiction finally splits them apart, Roscoe dies on the roadside too. The van has impeccable dramatic timing.
In the track list, Delilah receives something Emmett does not yet possess: numbered space. SIDE A and SIDE B contain her twenty-eight “Tracks”; Emmett appears in “Instrumentals” and “Interludes,” with a Coda and Outro near the end. Delilah gets the songs. Emmett gets the spaces between them. Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit from the Goon Squad” takes musical architecture into far stranger formal territory, but Shore’s quieter arrangement suits this book. Someone whose existence has always been fitted inside another person’s plan first appears inside somebody else’s album. Social posts, publicity statements, archival scraps and family records keep interrupting the narrative as well, apt for a story in which experience is forever being photographed, archived, promoted, inherited or turned into art before the person inside it has finished deciding what happened.
Prose is where Shore loosens the screws. Delilah’s close-third narration is quick, profane, funny, reference-hungry and companionable to the point of crowding. An observation becomes a joke, the joke opens a memory, the memory triggers anxiety, and the anxiety acquires a cultural reference or psychiatric self-check before the sentence has quite remembered where it began. Her mind annotates itself. Emmett’s sections lower the volume. Nail polish, a pronoun, a kiss or a place to sleep can acquire the dignity of an event because the ordinary entitlement to preference is still new. Shore does not make Emmett sound otherworldly so much as newly attentive to permissions everybody around them has forgotten to notice.
As a songwriter, Delilah rarely allows experience to remain experience for long. An archive becomes lyrics. Heartbreak becomes an album concept. Humiliation becomes a joke. Desire becomes evidence. That reflex is part of what makes her talented. It also helps her betray Emmett. A person able to turn almost anything into a song can fail to notice when the song is taking more than someone meant to give. Shore has scenes capable of carrying this without assistance, then often refuses to leave them alone. Feelings are dramatized and afterward interpreted; motifs return and are introduced to themselves. The house is sound. Its owner keeps showing us which walls bear weight.
Past lives reach Delilah first as paper. At the Lesbian Herstory Archives, she reads letters and poems left by women who desired, sulked, joked, traveled, kept secrets and bothered to write one another down. She cries. Then, because she is Delilah, she starts taking notes. Emmett finds related evidence elsewhere: a pronoun pin, drag, queer elders, strangers who become friends. Jacob’s family records offer another archive entirely, one that can wound, bind and eventually disclose the wording that saves Emmett. Shore is best here when the past remains material rather than moral – a page, a fragment, inherited clay, a sentence somebody failed to phrase carefully enough.
Against this, romance never performs the cheap miracle of curing Delilah. Bipolar disorder remains part of the logistics of her adulthood: medication, therapy, safety plans, manic episodes, depressive crashes, previous attempts, and the exhausting business of deciding whether an impulse is spontaneity or danger with better styling. Delilah sometimes has to argue herself into remaining alive. Emmett desperately wants life and has been ordered toward death. The conditions are not interchangeable, and Shore does not treat them as if they were. Delilah has a freedom she cannot always feel; Emmett has a desire they cannot reliably act on. Their love solves neither problem. It does make each harder to lie about.
Delilah’s history with Sam is messier than the abandoned wedding initially promises. Sam knew her safety plan, cared for her through frightening periods of illness and shared years of real tenderness with her. Sam loved her. Sam also made her smaller. She benefited from remaining the brighter star in Lilac+Crow and eventually admits that jealousy helped motivate her resistance to Delilah’s solo career. Their confrontation arrives with almost suspicious efficiency, everyone suddenly blessed with excellent retrospective vocabulary, but the mixed truth underneath it is worth keeping. Sam’s care was real; it was not an alibi. Delilah spent years arranging herself around Sam’s preferences and calling the arrangement her own desire.
It is when Emmett discovers the album that Shore’s argument stops being flattering to its heroine. They have answered painful questions because they believe Delilah is searching Jacob’s archive for a way to save them. She is searching. She is also hearing choruses. Jacob created Emmett as an answer to grief and assumed creation gave him rights over the created. Delilah has done nothing comparable in scale or violence, but she has taken a person trying to escape being instrumental and made that person instrumental to her art. Worse, she understands exactly why this should matter. The betrayal gives the romance a useful abrasion. Delilah cannot love her way out of having used somebody.
More often than the book needs, however, Shore explains what the scenes have already established. Want, permission, freedom, realness and selfhood recur until motifs begin arriving with name tags. Delilah worries again about being too difficult to love, about whether spontaneity is mania, about whether Sam’s access rather than her talent built the career, about whether her own pain is interesting enough to become art. Some repetition belongs to the loops of an anxious mind. Some simply belongs to a novel unwilling to trust silence. The same problem reaches the dialogue: people regularly achieve remarkable fluency about the exact shape of their wounds. Shore’s scenes are often subtler than the explanations following them.
In Helene Wecker’s “The Golem and the Jinni,” a golem severed from an intended master must also discover what existence can mean without the person for whom she was made, though Wecker distributes that problem through immigrant history and communal life. Casey McQuiston’s “One Last Stop” sits closer to Shore’s romantic register, making a queer happily-ever-after depend on solving an impossible supernatural condition rather than declaring sufficient devotion. Shore adds a rougher complication: the beloved who needs saving is also the story the artist wants to sell. Emmett is not simply the magical lover. They are the person Delilah must learn not to turn into an answer.
Toward the end, freedom arrives as an order. Delilah discovers that Jacob’s children can inherit his authority, and Ruth reaches Emmett just before they complete the command killing them. She orders Emmett to live, make their own decisions and obey no one unless obedience is freely chosen. Compulsory obedience is abolished by one final act of compulsory obedience. The loophole is almost too elegant for the problem it resolves. Its emotional force comes from what the magic does not settle. Saving Emmett does not entitle Delilah to forgiveness. It does not restore the romance. It does not give her permission to release the album. Emmett must decide those things after refusal has become possible.
Rather than stop with a body restored from stone, Shore jumps forward a year and gives Emmett something less spectacular: ordinary commitments that do not revolve around Delilah. They live in Brooklyn, work in a bookstore, study theology, queer theory, mysticism, art history and gender, make charcoal drawings and rebuild family relationships of their own. Delilah’s solo album, “Traveling Golem: A Love Story,” has succeeded, but she still has therapy appointments and dark periods. They remain a couple without treating proximity as proof. Emmett repairs Roscoe for another trip and, this time, drives. The platinum plaque is pleasant. The separate apartment matters more. Freedom would mean very little if the reward for acquiring it were simply a nicer master.
One habit keeps “Love Me Like a Rock Song” from reaching the level of its own best design: Shore too often explains an idea after she has already found the scene, object or formal choice that makes it clear. That keeps the novel at 82/100, or 4/5 stars, rather than higher. But its central trouble is worth the mileage. Love does not stop being possessive merely because possession is affectionate, and a person does not become free by finding someone kinder to belong to. By the last pages Roscoe has been repaired, Emmett is driving, Delilah has opened a fresh notebook, and neither is fleeing a wedding, a command or a death sentence. The fastest route is available. They take the scenic one because nobody has told them not to.
September 16, 2026
I am always a sucker for a Girl and Guitar story. This was so fun to read and very deep. I loved the characters, the plot, the imagery, everything about it.
September 2, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. After being left at the altar right before recording her solo album, lyricist Delilah Cohen decides to take her planned honeymoon road trip alone to find new songwriting inspiration. Along the California coast, she meets Emmett, a golem who joins her for the drive.
I gave this book 4.5 stars. This was such a fun road trip romcom with wonderful nonbinary and Jewish representation. Delilah’s growth as she grieves her past relationship, embraces her authentic self, and goes after what she wants is deeply rewarding to watch. Her bond with Emmett is equally special, and seeing Emmett step away from their creator's intent to explore queer culture, embrace they/them pronouns, and decide who they want to be adds so much warmth to the story. Their stops at unique, queer-specific locations had me ready to pack my bags and map out the exact same route. I had no prior knowledge of golem folklore before reading, so learning about the legend through Emmett made the whole experience even more meaningful.
I gave this book 4.5 stars. This was such a fun road trip romcom with wonderful nonbinary and Jewish representation. Delilah’s growth as she grieves her past relationship, embraces her authentic self, and goes after what she wants is deeply rewarding to watch. Her bond with Emmett is equally special, and seeing Emmett step away from their creator's intent to explore queer culture, embrace they/them pronouns, and decide who they want to be adds so much warmth to the story. Their stops at unique, queer-specific locations had me ready to pack my bags and map out the exact same route. I had no prior knowledge of golem folklore before reading, so learning about the legend through Emmett made the whole experience even more meaningful.
August 27, 2026
Thank you to @prhaudio for the review copies of this audiobook and to @ballantinebooks and @dellromance for the eARC through @netgalley.
📗 ALC Review—Love Me Like a Rock Song by Shelly Jay Shore, read by Major Curda and Jaime Lamchick
⏰ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
✨ Star rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5
✍🏻Review: Delilah Cohen just got dumped at the altar so she’s going on the honeymoon roadtrip she had planned for her wife, with stops at all the queer landmarks she can find. But before she even starts she meets Emmett and offers them a ride. As they trek together across the country Delilah discovers Emmett is actually a golem, a creature from Jewish mythology. The journey becomes a time of self reflection and inspiration for both of them. And they both must decide what they want their ending to be.
A monster romance but make it sweet and tender with gentle representation of mental health and grief and deep thoughts on identity. I loved Emmett and Delilah. Their chemistry. Their angst. Their laughter. Their adventures. I’m a sucker for a quirky cross country roadtrip as well! Their visits to queer landmarks sparked joy. All the colorful queer characters they met added brightness to the story.
The book is dual POV with dual narration. Both narrators did an excellent job with the different characters’ voices and accents. Sound quality was excellent even at 2x.
Shelly Jay Shore • Love Me Like a Rock Song • Dell Romance • Ballantine Books • Audiobook Review • Penguin Random House Audio • Fantasy • Queer Romance • ALC • Bookstagram
📗 ALC Review—Love Me Like a Rock Song by Shelly Jay Shore, read by Major Curda and Jaime Lamchick
⏰ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
✨ Star rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5
✍🏻Review: Delilah Cohen just got dumped at the altar so she’s going on the honeymoon roadtrip she had planned for her wife, with stops at all the queer landmarks she can find. But before she even starts she meets Emmett and offers them a ride. As they trek together across the country Delilah discovers Emmett is actually a golem, a creature from Jewish mythology. The journey becomes a time of self reflection and inspiration for both of them. And they both must decide what they want their ending to be.
A monster romance but make it sweet and tender with gentle representation of mental health and grief and deep thoughts on identity. I loved Emmett and Delilah. Their chemistry. Their angst. Their laughter. Their adventures. I’m a sucker for a quirky cross country roadtrip as well! Their visits to queer landmarks sparked joy. All the colorful queer characters they met added brightness to the story.
The book is dual POV with dual narration. Both narrators did an excellent job with the different characters’ voices and accents. Sound quality was excellent even at 2x.
Shelly Jay Shore • Love Me Like a Rock Song • Dell Romance • Ballantine Books • Audiobook Review • Penguin Random House Audio • Fantasy • Queer Romance • ALC • Bookstagram
August 24, 2026
I received a free e-arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.
If you enjoyed Shore's previous book Rules for Ghosting you're likely to enjoy this one as well, despite the very different premise. They continue to tackle hard topics with care, but also with a kind of levity at times that reminds people they're not alone. They don't fall into the trap of fixing things such as mental health and trauma with the power of love, and instead shows what living with it while also being loved looks like.
Emmett's being a golem as an allegory for the human experience is really unique. Their chapters are few and far between compared to Delilah's, but hit just as hard. The fact that this is a queer book as well, written in a time when so many of us are dehumanized, makes this more powerful. Delilah's struggle between queer joy and queer anger resonates just as much. A lot of readers are likely to see themselves in both these characters.
The only thing I didn't love is how fast they move. The book itself is a decent length so you forget how short a road trip it is, but by the end of the book they really haven't known each other for very long. Delilah also falls pretty fast for Emmett, and while Shore tries to avoid diminishing the relationship she had with Sam, it still doesn't feel quite right.
Overall I really enjoyed this story and I can't wait to revisit Delilah and Emmett in the future.
If you enjoyed Shore's previous book Rules for Ghosting you're likely to enjoy this one as well, despite the very different premise. They continue to tackle hard topics with care, but also with a kind of levity at times that reminds people they're not alone. They don't fall into the trap of fixing things such as mental health and trauma with the power of love, and instead shows what living with it while also being loved looks like.
Emmett's being a golem as an allegory for the human experience is really unique. Their chapters are few and far between compared to Delilah's, but hit just as hard. The fact that this is a queer book as well, written in a time when so many of us are dehumanized, makes this more powerful. Delilah's struggle between queer joy and queer anger resonates just as much. A lot of readers are likely to see themselves in both these characters.
The only thing I didn't love is how fast they move. The book itself is a decent length so you forget how short a road trip it is, but by the end of the book they really haven't known each other for very long. Delilah also falls pretty fast for Emmett, and while Shore tries to avoid diminishing the relationship she had with Sam, it still doesn't feel quite right.
Overall I really enjoyed this story and I can't wait to revisit Delilah and Emmett in the future.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
With a high profile wedding of a singer-songwriter duo cancelled in the last 24 hours, one of the would-be brides decides to go on the planned roadtrip honeymoon alone
Delilah is taking a vintage camper from NY to CA while rewriting an entire album. The ‘queer HEA’ songs no longer fit, but she’s not losing her solo debut to ex Sam’s bad choices
If it weren’t for mysterious stranger Emmett saving her from being run over at the first stop, it would have been a short and tragic trip
She’s only half relieved…
Emmitt was going by bus to CA, fulfilling one last order before they can be free of Jacob, who made them 20 years ago
Did I mention they’re a golem? It’s pretty important!
Now they’re traveling together
In real life, a terrible idea, true crime novel potential
Luckily for Delilah, this is a romance novel
Unluckily for Emmett, Jacob was a Real Piece Of Work, and his last order reflects this…
This is full of road trip staples -
Inadvisable amounts of coffee & snacks, restaurants in between
Roadside attraction stops en route - largely queer related museums, bookshops etc thanks to Delilah’s planning - Emmitt full of wonder as they learn so much of the world they were sheltered from
Listening to a podcast in between Delilah working new songs - I loved the “transcript” parts from Iris and Delilah’s old podcast, probably as much as Emmitt
And, of course, introspective chats that happen when there isn’t much to distract. Them getting closer with every mile
The dual pov was ideal, since they both, understandably, had so much going on in their heads that they weren’t ready to speak out loud
By the end I was stressing the possibility of the HEA. So hard.
I actually had to step away for a minute…ok, night
You know the writing is good when you care So Deeply about the characters that you absolutely cannot bear the thought of them not finding their happiness
But in the Romance Genre we trust, right?
Like Rules for Ghosting, I so enjoyed this
A new auto-read author for me!
Thanks to Dell for the arc!
*note the CWs at the start, mental health being a main theme
Delilah is taking a vintage camper from NY to CA while rewriting an entire album. The ‘queer HEA’ songs no longer fit, but she’s not losing her solo debut to ex Sam’s bad choices
If it weren’t for mysterious stranger Emmett saving her from being run over at the first stop, it would have been a short and tragic trip
She’s only half relieved…
Emmitt was going by bus to CA, fulfilling one last order before they can be free of Jacob, who made them 20 years ago
Did I mention they’re a golem? It’s pretty important!
Now they’re traveling together
In real life, a terrible idea, true crime novel potential
Luckily for Delilah, this is a romance novel
Unluckily for Emmett, Jacob was a Real Piece Of Work, and his last order reflects this…
This is full of road trip staples -
Inadvisable amounts of coffee & snacks, restaurants in between
Roadside attraction stops en route - largely queer related museums, bookshops etc thanks to Delilah’s planning - Emmitt full of wonder as they learn so much of the world they were sheltered from
Listening to a podcast in between Delilah working new songs - I loved the “transcript” parts from Iris and Delilah’s old podcast, probably as much as Emmitt
And, of course, introspective chats that happen when there isn’t much to distract. Them getting closer with every mile
The dual pov was ideal, since they both, understandably, had so much going on in their heads that they weren’t ready to speak out loud
By the end I was stressing the possibility of the HEA. So hard.
I actually had to step away for a minute…ok, night
You know the writing is good when you care So Deeply about the characters that you absolutely cannot bear the thought of them not finding their happiness
But in the Romance Genre we trust, right?
Like Rules for Ghosting, I so enjoyed this
A new auto-read author for me!
Thanks to Dell for the arc!
*note the CWs at the start, mental health being a main theme
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Newly single singer Delilah who finds herself still needing to write her solo album that originally was to be a love tribute of what would have been her new wife before her fiance left her right before their wedding. Delilah is determined to not only write her album but still take the road trip that was supposed to be her honeymoon. Right before her trip, she meets Emmett, a mystical golem from Jewish lore looking to head the same direction but for the purpose to end it all as the last command of their now passed creator.
What we have for the rest of the book after this initial meet is a beautifully touching queer road trip that had my whole heart. In their journey across the country, making their way from east coast to west, the story wonderfully weaves stops at queer libraries, queer museums, and campsites where our protagonists get to meet and chat with a variety of members within the queer community. Along the way, we get snippets of podcasts, Torah quotes, and text messages that are perfectly woven into the story that adds another layer to the events of this story.
The biggest highlight is how well Shelley Jay Shore crafts the believable affection growing between Delilah and Emmett. For a story that technically spans a short length of time, Shore makes us believe in the affection these two have for each other. In the quiet moments, in their thoughts between each of their respective chapters, where it does not feel rushed. The initial attraction is real but with each stop, with each event, we see how much Delilah heals and finds her new inspiration for her solo album while Emmett struggles with their want of living vs the command they were given. And by the end, we're given the best ending we could get from this beautiful story of new starts and life.
Will absolutely be picking up a copy of this on release day and I highly recommend you do as well.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this e-Arc in exchange for an honest review.
What we have for the rest of the book after this initial meet is a beautifully touching queer road trip that had my whole heart. In their journey across the country, making their way from east coast to west, the story wonderfully weaves stops at queer libraries, queer museums, and campsites where our protagonists get to meet and chat with a variety of members within the queer community. Along the way, we get snippets of podcasts, Torah quotes, and text messages that are perfectly woven into the story that adds another layer to the events of this story.
The biggest highlight is how well Shelley Jay Shore crafts the believable affection growing between Delilah and Emmett. For a story that technically spans a short length of time, Shore makes us believe in the affection these two have for each other. In the quiet moments, in their thoughts between each of their respective chapters, where it does not feel rushed. The initial attraction is real but with each stop, with each event, we see how much Delilah heals and finds her new inspiration for her solo album while Emmett struggles with their want of living vs the command they were given. And by the end, we're given the best ending we could get from this beautiful story of new starts and life.
Will absolutely be picking up a copy of this on release day and I highly recommend you do as well.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this e-Arc in exchange for an honest review.
August 26, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Ugh no. This one was way too much and yet not enough for me. There were so many key themes and potentially interesting routes to explore that none of them got adequate attention. Between the modern queer romance, the music industry, the creation of art, the in depth queer history, the Jewish folklore, the Jewish religion, the existence (or not) of a soul, the fantasy elements, the exploration of the entire US, mental illness and its coping mechanisms… it was just way too much. Half of those elements could have been skipped and nothing would have been lost. Then add in the fact that I couldn’t find the FMC lovable or relatable, especially after the choice she makes in rewriting her album… and to top of off the ending was really “deus ex machina” which doesn’t do it for me. So overall it’s a definite no for me.
Ugh no. This one was way too much and yet not enough for me. There were so many key themes and potentially interesting routes to explore that none of them got adequate attention. Between the modern queer romance, the music industry, the creation of art, the in depth queer history, the Jewish folklore, the Jewish religion, the existence (or not) of a soul, the fantasy elements, the exploration of the entire US, mental illness and its coping mechanisms… it was just way too much. Half of those elements could have been skipped and nothing would have been lost. Then add in the fact that I couldn’t find the FMC lovable or relatable, especially after the choice she makes in rewriting her album… and to top of off the ending was really “deus ex machina” which doesn’t do it for me. So overall it’s a definite no for me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Having Emmett be a golem (in the Jewish creature made of clay and brought to life as a protector sense, not the LOTR sense) was an interesting choice. I liked that Delilah takes her planned “gay” road trip, albeit not under the planned circumstances. And that she uses the opportunity to introduce Emmett to and educate them on queer history and culture, which is a foreign concept given their strict and sheltered upbringing. But which also resonates given their “other” status.
I know the standard story arc requires Delilah to betray or alienate Emmett, but I did not particularly care for how the author chose to have that occur. However, how she has Delilah make amends was quite good. And how Ruth saves and frees Emmett is beautiful. I enjoyed how the author uses the road trip and the changing relationship between Delilah and Emmett to help Delilah realize her true worth and to give Emmett a sense of agency.
I know the standard story arc requires Delilah to betray or alienate Emmett, but I did not particularly care for how the author chose to have that occur. However, how she has Delilah make amends was quite good. And how Ruth saves and frees Emmett is beautiful. I enjoyed how the author uses the road trip and the changing relationship between Delilah and Emmett to help Delilah realize her true worth and to give Emmett a sense of agency.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Many thanks to Dell and Netgalley for the digital review copy! This book will be out on August 25.
What if your fiancée dumps you on your wedding day, but you decide to still go on the camper trip you planned for your honeymoon by yourself? And what if a random stranger saves you from traffic, you offer to drop them off at the busstation, but you end up inviting them to join you on your road trip? And then, perhaps, you fall in love? Oh, but the random stranger has certain (mythological) secrets of their own, and you have to save their life?
With her second book, Shelly Jay Shore once again delivered on an unconventional romance that works SO well! I was maybe a little hesitant about the mythological element at first, but it was portrayed so realistically that I just felt like it made sense. Mainly, Delilah and Emmett were so incredibly lovely together. I loved both of them so much, and the way they interacted felt so mutually soft, it was wonderful to read.
What if your fiancée dumps you on your wedding day, but you decide to still go on the camper trip you planned for your honeymoon by yourself? And what if a random stranger saves you from traffic, you offer to drop them off at the busstation, but you end up inviting them to join you on your road trip? And then, perhaps, you fall in love? Oh, but the random stranger has certain (mythological) secrets of their own, and you have to save their life?
With her second book, Shelly Jay Shore once again delivered on an unconventional romance that works SO well! I was maybe a little hesitant about the mythological element at first, but it was portrayed so realistically that I just felt like it made sense. Mainly, Delilah and Emmett were so incredibly lovely together. I loved both of them so much, and the way they interacted felt so mutually soft, it was wonderful to read.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Thank you PRH Audio for the gifted advanced listener copy of this audiobook (all opinions are mine)!
I’ll tell you what, I went into this book totally blind about the plot or what to expect, just liked the cover and thought it might be something out of my comfort zone or what I normally read. I’ll say, it certainly was that! This was delightfully weird! I’m really glad I picked this book up.
There was a lot of different representation in this book that made it a well rounded story. From bipolar rep to Jewish culture to LGBTQ+, there were a lot of moving parts here and each facet of the story was as important as the rest. The author wrote the depth of each character remarkably well, but I especially enjoyed Emmett’s character arc. It was fascinating and moving all at once. I loved Delilah and was really impressed with her arc as well. Definitely giving points to the author for having a unique writing style that captivated me from page one!
I’ll say, I kind of wish Delilah and Emmett would’ve stayed friends instead of adding romance to this. The romance is where the book started to lose me (which is not usually the case). I just felt they would’ve paired better as lifelong friends and should’ve gone on their own separate adventures while staying in each other’s lives. So, that’s why I’m giving this 4 stars. However, I do still recommend this because I loovvee something that’s a little outside of the box! I will be reading this author’s other book because I hear great things and overall enjoyed this book.
I loved that this audiobook was dual narration and both narrators represented their characters well. I liked that the voice of Emmett came off as a little stiff with not a lot of emotion because it matched his character perfectly as the book went on. This was great on audio!
Thanks again to PRH Audio for the advanced listener copy, Love Me Like A Rock Song releases August 25th!
I’ll tell you what, I went into this book totally blind about the plot or what to expect, just liked the cover and thought it might be something out of my comfort zone or what I normally read. I’ll say, it certainly was that! This was delightfully weird! I’m really glad I picked this book up.
There was a lot of different representation in this book that made it a well rounded story. From bipolar rep to Jewish culture to LGBTQ+, there were a lot of moving parts here and each facet of the story was as important as the rest. The author wrote the depth of each character remarkably well, but I especially enjoyed Emmett’s character arc. It was fascinating and moving all at once. I loved Delilah and was really impressed with her arc as well. Definitely giving points to the author for having a unique writing style that captivated me from page one!
I’ll say, I kind of wish Delilah and Emmett would’ve stayed friends instead of adding romance to this. The romance is where the book started to lose me (which is not usually the case). I just felt they would’ve paired better as lifelong friends and should’ve gone on their own separate adventures while staying in each other’s lives. So, that’s why I’m giving this 4 stars. However, I do still recommend this because I loovvee something that’s a little outside of the box! I will be reading this author’s other book because I hear great things and overall enjoyed this book.
I loved that this audiobook was dual narration and both narrators represented their characters well. I liked that the voice of Emmett came off as a little stiff with not a lot of emotion because it matched his character perfectly as the book went on. This was great on audio!
Thanks again to PRH Audio for the advanced listener copy, Love Me Like A Rock Song releases August 25th!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine for the eARC
Having loved "Rules for ghosting", I was very eager an curious to discover the second book from the same author. "Rules for ghosting" had a very peculiar atmosphere, very centered around character work and evolution and little romance. The latter is true for "Love me like a rock song", the former a little less. Or, to be more accurate, I felt it on Emmett side but less on Delilah's. Not that this is anything bad, let me clear about that. In fact, it is quite nice to have a different tone for both characters, added to their similar but different issues and goals. It simply means I am less entranced by "Love me like a rock song" compared to "Rules for ghosting."
I really enjoyed how Shore managed the different style of narration, with podcast retranscriptions, texts, pieces of journals. They add to the emotional layers and context in which the story happens. Delilah, freshly single since her fiancée broke up with her before their wedding, is going on a road trip to try and get herself back together. She also needs to rewrite her whole album. On the way, she picks Emmett. Emmett, it turns out, is a golem, and has been ordererd by his now dead creator to unmake himself. As Emmett accepts to join Delilah on her road trip, he finally gets to learn more about himself outside the confines of Jacob's grief and orders. Emmett realises they are nonbinary as Delilah guide them through different places of queer history. They also get to know Delilah and vice-versa, making the romance part of the book slowly.
I have a deep tenderness for Emmett. There is something so... innocent and fesh about them. Wounded, and ancient. Their interactions with Delilah are cute and tender, sometimes frought. They can read her, and it unsettles her. Delilah is used to be controlled in her relationships, to have to change herself. She doesn't trust herself or other easily, has a history of mistakes and has to manage her bipolar disorder as well as her friend and family's worries.
Honestly, it's well done and very enjoyable to read about these two flawed, struggling people. They make mistakes, they learn but are still imperfect. The tone is filled with knowledge about queer history, a sense of... light weight, if that makes sense.
So glad I got the chance to read it before it's release!
Having loved "Rules for ghosting", I was very eager an curious to discover the second book from the same author. "Rules for ghosting" had a very peculiar atmosphere, very centered around character work and evolution and little romance. The latter is true for "Love me like a rock song", the former a little less. Or, to be more accurate, I felt it on Emmett side but less on Delilah's. Not that this is anything bad, let me clear about that. In fact, it is quite nice to have a different tone for both characters, added to their similar but different issues and goals. It simply means I am less entranced by "Love me like a rock song" compared to "Rules for ghosting."
I really enjoyed how Shore managed the different style of narration, with podcast retranscriptions, texts, pieces of journals. They add to the emotional layers and context in which the story happens. Delilah, freshly single since her fiancée broke up with her before their wedding, is going on a road trip to try and get herself back together. She also needs to rewrite her whole album. On the way, she picks Emmett. Emmett, it turns out, is a golem, and has been ordererd by his now dead creator to unmake himself. As Emmett accepts to join Delilah on her road trip, he finally gets to learn more about himself outside the confines of Jacob's grief and orders. Emmett realises they are nonbinary as Delilah guide them through different places of queer history. They also get to know Delilah and vice-versa, making the romance part of the book slowly.
I have a deep tenderness for Emmett. There is something so... innocent and fesh about them. Wounded, and ancient. Their interactions with Delilah are cute and tender, sometimes frought. They can read her, and it unsettles her. Delilah is used to be controlled in her relationships, to have to change herself. She doesn't trust herself or other easily, has a history of mistakes and has to manage her bipolar disorder as well as her friend and family's worries.
Honestly, it's well done and very enjoyable to read about these two flawed, struggling people. They make mistakes, they learn but are still imperfect. The tone is filled with knowledge about queer history, a sense of... light weight, if that makes sense.
So glad I got the chance to read it before it's release!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher, for which I thank them.
“Love Me Like a Rock Song” is by Shelly Jay Shore. I really liked Rules for Ghosting, this author’s first book, and I know that quite often the sophomoric books aren’t quite as good. But, I was eager to read this one based upon the premise. Let me start by saying that the writing was once again engaging. I had a little bit (okay, more than a little bit) of a problem not with Emmett being a golem, but with the magic system of Emmett being a golem - was there a “human glamour” to appear to look human? What about the aging? It was a minor thing to focus on, but those questions kept pulling me out of the story as I hoped that either the journals would solve that puzzled - and they didn’t. Usually I’m one for other sources of information in a story - podcasts, IG chats, whatever - but, as the book went on, I found myself skimming them - they seemed too long and while some added to the story, some seemed to be more off-topic (or maybe too pointed a topic?) inclusions for Deliah’s friend to pontificate upon. I didn’t understand Sam at all - hey, breaking up with you - oh now I want you back, but I’m gonna stay with my new girlfriend in the end - uh, whiplash much? Shore’s first book, I think, was a bit more linear in presentation - this one felt a bit more all over the place - at least for my taste. Would I read another book by this author - yes, in a heartbeat because I find the topics/ideas really interesting. But, sadly, for me this book wasn’t as great as I hoped it could be.
“Love Me Like a Rock Song” is by Shelly Jay Shore. I really liked Rules for Ghosting, this author’s first book, and I know that quite often the sophomoric books aren’t quite as good. But, I was eager to read this one based upon the premise. Let me start by saying that the writing was once again engaging. I had a little bit (okay, more than a little bit) of a problem not with Emmett being a golem, but with the magic system of Emmett being a golem - was there a “human glamour” to appear to look human? What about the aging? It was a minor thing to focus on, but those questions kept pulling me out of the story as I hoped that either the journals would solve that puzzled - and they didn’t. Usually I’m one for other sources of information in a story - podcasts, IG chats, whatever - but, as the book went on, I found myself skimming them - they seemed too long and while some added to the story, some seemed to be more off-topic (or maybe too pointed a topic?) inclusions for Deliah’s friend to pontificate upon. I didn’t understand Sam at all - hey, breaking up with you - oh now I want you back, but I’m gonna stay with my new girlfriend in the end - uh, whiplash much? Shore’s first book, I think, was a bit more linear in presentation - this one felt a bit more all over the place - at least for my taste. Would I read another book by this author - yes, in a heartbeat because I find the topics/ideas really interesting. But, sadly, for me this book wasn’t as great as I hoped it could be.
April 8, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and Ballentine for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!
Love Me Like a Rock Song by Shelly Jay Shore follows Delilah Cohen, who after her fiancée and music partner ends their engagement decides to go on their honeymoon road trip anyway. Emmett, a golem, ends up saving Delilah’s life and Delilah impulsively invites them to join her. What follows is an emotional road trip featuring queer history, music, Jewish folklore, and more. Delilah and Emmett can’t deny their attraction to each other despite how recently Delilah was broken up with and Emmett’s destiny to be unmade. Will their love story have a happy ending?
Shore is a talented writer, their prose strong and characters layered. I was especially attached to Emmett. They’re such a sweetheart and I loved seeing them casually decide to use they/them pronouns and identify as genderfluid.
I enjoyed the use of multimedia throughout - there are excerpts from interviews, transcripts from Delilah’s friend’s podcast, and handwritten notes and song lyrics. Sometimes multimedia elements feel forced and don’t add anything to the story but here they elevated it, adding more depth to the overall story.
I really appreciated the bipolar representation. As a mentally ill reader, it meant a lot to me to read about Delilah’s experience. I can’t speak towards the Jewish representation but it is Own Voices and seemed to be done with great care.
I didn’t love the lack of communication and even lies surrounding Delilah’s use of Emmett’s father figure’s journals (I’m trying to be vague so I don’t spoil anything). It was such a huge violation of Emmett’s trust and I found it hard to accept and move on from.
Overall, it was a very emotional, tender story that I enjoyed. It didn’t have the same magic for me as Shore’s debut Rules for Ghosting but there’s still a lot to love and I recommend it.
Love Me Like a Rock Song by Shelly Jay Shore follows Delilah Cohen, who after her fiancée and music partner ends their engagement decides to go on their honeymoon road trip anyway. Emmett, a golem, ends up saving Delilah’s life and Delilah impulsively invites them to join her. What follows is an emotional road trip featuring queer history, music, Jewish folklore, and more. Delilah and Emmett can’t deny their attraction to each other despite how recently Delilah was broken up with and Emmett’s destiny to be unmade. Will their love story have a happy ending?
Shore is a talented writer, their prose strong and characters layered. I was especially attached to Emmett. They’re such a sweetheart and I loved seeing them casually decide to use they/them pronouns and identify as genderfluid.
I enjoyed the use of multimedia throughout - there are excerpts from interviews, transcripts from Delilah’s friend’s podcast, and handwritten notes and song lyrics. Sometimes multimedia elements feel forced and don’t add anything to the story but here they elevated it, adding more depth to the overall story.
I really appreciated the bipolar representation. As a mentally ill reader, it meant a lot to me to read about Delilah’s experience. I can’t speak towards the Jewish representation but it is Own Voices and seemed to be done with great care.
I didn’t love the lack of communication and even lies surrounding Delilah’s use of Emmett’s father figure’s journals (I’m trying to be vague so I don’t spoil anything). It was such a huge violation of Emmett’s trust and I found it hard to accept and move on from.
Overall, it was a very emotional, tender story that I enjoyed. It didn’t have the same magic for me as Shore’s debut Rules for Ghosting but there’s still a lot to love and I recommend it.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you Net Galley for the invite to read this. The story follows Delilah and Emmett. Delilah is a musician who is struggling and questioning the music she wrote as she's just been left by her fiancée Sam. Despite her family and friends concerns, Delilah decides to go on her planned honeymoon road trip in hopes of inspiration. Soon after, she meets Emmett who saves her from being hit by a car. On a whim, she invites Emmett to ride along with her. They quickly bond as they are both grieving and questioning things. Delilah is grieving her break up and questioning whether she can make music anymore. Emmett is grieving his maker, Jacob. Emmett is a golem who was made by Jacob as a way to deal with the loss of his son, Isaac. On the trip, Delilah and Emmett become friends, share new experiences, make new friends, reveal their vulnerabilities, discover themselves, and question what's important to them. I really enjoyed this read as it was a touching story full of heart, healing, and emotional grit. I really liked Delilah and Emmett as they are both vulnerable, lost, and a little messy. I also enjoyed seeing them go on their journey to learn to love themselves and self reflect to heal. I also liked the Jewish parables and queer representation that was reflected throughout the story. If you like road trips that have romance, explore grief and healing, this is a good choice for you.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
As someone who loved Rules For Ghosting, is queer, and also loves indie rock and indie rock books (Daisy Jones And The Six is my favorite of all time) I was exceptionally excited for this book. By the end of the book I truly was so entertained and on the edge of my seat to find out what happens. However, it took me a long time to be that interested in the book. I think the pacing was really inconsistent, and also that it was hard to really be invested in Emmet and Delilah at first. Delilah was a tough sell she was so pessimistic and bitchy it was hard to get into her a little. Which I get she was just coming off a breakup but I don’t know I wasn’t a huge fan. I personally did not love all the random mixed media inserts, and also I know Emmet is nonbinary but I think I expected an afab non binary and something more sapphic? Which is truly not a bad thing that it isn’t it just threw me off and I think that also didn’t help. Overall I think this was a super fun book and I’m very grateful for being gifted a copy to read. I loved the vibes and I loved the true queer heart throughout. If the pacing issues and some of the character work and flow were a bit better I think it would be such an incredible book because the concept was THERE.
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