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The Magic Jukebox #5
Moondance
The Magic Jukebox sits in the Faulk Street Tavern in the quiet seaside town of Brogan’s Point, Massachusetts. No one knows what classic rock songs will come out of the jukebox when a coin is inserted, but every now and then, the jukebox will play a song that casts a spell on two bar patrons—a song that will change their lives and open their hearts to love.
Cory Malone and Talia Roszik married as teenagers after Talia became pregnant. Their marriage didn’t last, but their love for their daughter did. Fifteen years after their divorce, Wendy Malone is graduating from high school, and Cory has traveled to Brogan’s Point for the occasion. But Cory’s and Talia’s plans—and their emotions—are thrown into turmoil when they hear the Magic Jukebox play “Moondance.” Can a single song make them forget all the hurt and rediscover the love that once brought them together?
Cory Malone and Talia Roszik married as teenagers after Talia became pregnant. Their marriage didn’t last, but their love for their daughter did. Fifteen years after their divorce, Wendy Malone is graduating from high school, and Cory has traveled to Brogan’s Point for the occasion. But Cory’s and Talia’s plans—and their emotions—are thrown into turmoil when they hear the Magic Jukebox play “Moondance.” Can a single song make them forget all the hurt and rediscover the love that once brought them together?
- GenresContemporary
180 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 2, 2015
31 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Judith Arnold
183 books171 followersBarbara Keiler
aka Ariel Berk, Thea Frederick, Judith Arnold
Barbara Keiler was born on April 7th. She started telling stories before shecould write. She was four when her sister, Carolyn, stuffed a crayon intoher hand and taught her the alphabet, and she's been writing ever since.
Barbara is a graduate of Smith College, where she learned to aim for thestars, and she received a master's degree in creative writing from BrownUniversity, where she took aim at a good-looking graduate student in thechemistry department and wound up marrying him. She says: "Before myhusband and I were married, I had a job in California and he was working onhis Ph.D. in Rhode Island. I became ill, and he hopped on a plane and flewacross the country to be with me. Neither of us had any money, but he saidhe simply couldn't concentrate on his research, knowing I was three thousandmiles away and facing a serious health problem all by myself. He stayed fortwo weeks, until I was pretty well recovered. That he would just drop whathe was doing, put his life on hold and race to my side told me how much heloved me. After that, I knew this was the man I wanted to marry."
Barbara has received writing fellowships from the Shubert Foundation and theNational Endowment for the Arts, and has taught at colleges and universitiesaround the country. She has also written several plays that have beenprofessionally staged at regional theaters in San Francisco, Washington, D.C.,Connecticut and off-off-Broadway.
Since her first romance novel's publication in 1983 as Ariel Berk. Shewrote one novel as Thea Frederick, and since 1985 she writes asJudith Arnold. Barbara has sold more than 70 novels, with eight millioncopies in print worldwide. She has recently signed a contract with MIRABooks. Her first MIRA novel will appear in 2001. She has received severalawards from Romantic Times Magazine, including awards for the Best HarlequinAmerican Romance of the Year, Best Harlequin Superromance of the Year, BestSeries Romantic Novel of the Year and a Lifetime Achievement Certificate ofMerit for Innovative Series Romance. She has also been a finalist for theGolden Medallion Award and the RITA Award for Romance Writer of America. Hernovel Barefoot in the Grass has appeared on the recommended reading listsdistributed by cancer support services at several hospitals.
Barbara lives in a small town not far from Boston, Massachusetts, New England with her husband, two teenage sons, and a guinea pig named Wilbur. Her sister Carolyn died of breast cancer in 1998.
aka Ariel Berk, Thea Frederick, Judith Arnold
Barbara Keiler was born on April 7th. She started telling stories before shecould write. She was four when her sister, Carolyn, stuffed a crayon intoher hand and taught her the alphabet, and she's been writing ever since.
Barbara is a graduate of Smith College, where she learned to aim for thestars, and she received a master's degree in creative writing from BrownUniversity, where she took aim at a good-looking graduate student in thechemistry department and wound up marrying him. She says: "Before myhusband and I were married, I had a job in California and he was working onhis Ph.D. in Rhode Island. I became ill, and he hopped on a plane and flewacross the country to be with me. Neither of us had any money, but he saidhe simply couldn't concentrate on his research, knowing I was three thousandmiles away and facing a serious health problem all by myself. He stayed fortwo weeks, until I was pretty well recovered. That he would just drop whathe was doing, put his life on hold and race to my side told me how much heloved me. After that, I knew this was the man I wanted to marry."
Barbara has received writing fellowships from the Shubert Foundation and theNational Endowment for the Arts, and has taught at colleges and universitiesaround the country. She has also written several plays that have beenprofessionally staged at regional theaters in San Francisco, Washington, D.C.,Connecticut and off-off-Broadway.
Since her first romance novel's publication in 1983 as Ariel Berk. Shewrote one novel as Thea Frederick, and since 1985 she writes asJudith Arnold. Barbara has sold more than 70 novels, with eight millioncopies in print worldwide. She has recently signed a contract with MIRABooks. Her first MIRA novel will appear in 2001. She has received severalawards from Romantic Times Magazine, including awards for the Best HarlequinAmerican Romance of the Year, Best Harlequin Superromance of the Year, BestSeries Romantic Novel of the Year and a Lifetime Achievement Certificate ofMerit for Innovative Series Romance. She has also been a finalist for theGolden Medallion Award and the RITA Award for Romance Writer of America. Hernovel Barefoot in the Grass has appeared on the recommended reading listsdistributed by cancer support services at several hospitals.
Barbara lives in a small town not far from Boston, Massachusetts, New England with her husband, two teenage sons, and a guinea pig named Wilbur. Her sister Carolyn died of breast cancer in 1998.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 20, 2015
Grade D
Ok I didn’t absolutely hate it.
I was prepared to completely love it because (1) I love the second chance trope; (2) I loved a previous story in this serious about the magic jukebox; (3) what’s not to love in a matchmaking magic jukebox, after all.
When I read a book, though, there are a few thing that are going to 100% annoy me (1) the feeling that the author did not employ a professional editor; (2) the sense that the author published a first draft; (3) when the cover artist clearly did not read the story; (4) when the author is more interested in using the story as a set-up for more books in the series then in telling this particular story; (5) and when the author clearly slept through all of her or his English classes beginning in elementary school and ending in college, if attended, because this is a book written by someone who has not business ever writing and if who persisted in that delusion, should certainly not have been published. Moondance solidly failed on the first three with a hint of number four.
Let’s talk about what I liked. At first glance, I really liked Talia, Cory and their daughter, Wendy. Love the name “Wendy.” Love meeting everyone in an Indian restaurant because I love Indian food. Love that Talia did not know she would be seeing her former husband, Corey, for the first time since she divorced him and that Wendy had fooled her. At first I thought Wendy was trying to trick them to get back together but I soon realized all she wanted was her dad around for the special events of her last week of high school. Which, by the way, is way cooler than the last week of my high school and I am so jealous.
We know from the blurb that this is a second chance story. Talia and Cory were high school lovers who got pregnant and married. It didn’t work, they divorced, it’s years later. I like a good second chance story. So many of us do. I don’t know about you but I’d like to think that when I fell in love with that guy in high school, back when I was still fairly innocent and untainted by the world, that that choice was The One.
I also love the song “Moondance.” Who doesn’t? I’ve never met a woman who told me she hated it. I think it might be the most romantic song ever written. “Fantabulous” surely should have made its way into the common parlance by now.
As for a magic jukebox as a matchmaker… well, I don’t know about you but my own choices didn’t work out so well for me and I willing to believe a jukebox knows better than I who is my Mr. Right. Owning that I am strictly hetero here. Although I did say, wistfully, to a very dear friend of the female type, when we were moaning our failures with boyfriends, that it was a shame we couldn’t make ourselves be lesbians because we were such good friends, it’s shame we couldn’t take care of each other’s sexual needs. She spit up her wine all over me. Yeah, I’d entrust my love life to a jukebox.
Clearly, Talia and Cory had grown up quite a bit since the time they divorced, Cory more so than Talia, as is often the case. We don’t exactly know how they accomplished this, it’s just a given.
Sadly, what I didn’t like far outnumbered what I liked. It is All Too Obvious that Arnold did not employ a professional editor. I suspect she relied on spell check. A professional editor would have caught errors such as “much” instead of “mulch” or “they” instead of “the” or even “the” instead of “they.” The book was riddled with properly spelled words that were quite obviously the wrong words. Which is why I think Arnold used spell check rather than an editor. I think even Beta readers would have caught these errors.
I said above one of the things that annoy me is the sense that the author published a first draft and I very strongly have that feeling. The backstory is a complex one and is very awkwardly interwoven. For instance, in the first chapter Talia walks into the restaurant, sees Cory and there is all this exposition. All this reflection. All this memory. Sure some of it would make sense but there is just too much to fit in between the time it takes to walk inside the restaurant and walk to the table. Wendy says “Surprise” followed by pages and pages of narrative instead of what would be the more normal behavior of greeting Wendy’s boyfriend, saying something polite to the ex-husband, etc. Granted we have to have the backstory, placing it here just felt too awkward to me.
Wendy and boyfriend naturally have after-dinner plans and off they go, leaving Talia and Cory at the Punjab Palace. Cory suggests they go out for a drink which is the segue to expose them to the magic jukebox. That seemed awkward to me because they were already in a restaurant and, presumably, beverages were available there. But under the influence of the Magic Jukebox they must be, so no matter how silly the segue, it must happen.
The jukebox plays “Moondance.” Why “Moondance,” I kept wondering? It seemed to have no connection to their past. It wasn’t “their song.” It did not seem to influence Talia quite as much as Cory but it did bother her.
Although not as much, I thought, as the idea that Cory want to move his mother, who had a stroke to Brogan’s Point, MA and hire Talia’s company as Tina’s caregivers. Talia is very much opposed to this. She doesn’t like Tina and doesn’t want her around. Talia really dislikes Tina for excellent reasons. When Talia and Cory were teenagers, married and pregnant, Cory was going to college. They were living with Tina. After Wendy was born, Talia had a job at the convenience store and Tina watched the baby. More like neglected her, didn’t change her diaper, smoked pot in front of her, let her stay up to all hours, and other forms of benign neglect.
Talia says she doesn’t want Tina in Brogan’s Point and she doesn’t want her as a client. Cory tells her it is not up to her. She accepts this as a given and I am all, what? You are going to let him walk all over you? And then what happens? They kiss. She doesn’t like his plans, doesn’t like the way he is treating her, divorced him because he was a lousy husband, yet because of “Moondance” kisses him. Nope. Not buying it.
Which triggers the memory of when they first met, etc etc and this takes place in the space of the kiss? Cause there are lots of pages there.
Meanwhile, Talia goes home and remembers her life after she left Cory, raising Wendy and living at her Grammy’s place. She couldn’t go to her parents because good Roman Catholics that they are, when she told them she was pregnant, they had kicked her out the door.
Gotta tell you, the backstory is stuck in here in the most awkward place in all sorts of bits and pieces.
Meanwhile Cory schemes how to get Talia back in bed with him and plots his secret agenda which he never bothered to tell Talia about. Not only was he moving Tina to Brogan’s Point but a branch of Cory’s company is moving to Boston and Cory will be running it. No, he just allows Talia to think he is dumping his mother on her.
Of course they have sex. But before that happens, she takes him to her bedroom where Talia does a lengthy, and I mean, mental lengthy review of her bedroom decor. Seems totally misplaced to me. If she is finding Cory unbearably attractive that against everything she has been telling herself so far she is still going to sleep with him, why on earth would she be thinking about how her bedroom is decorated? Gotta tell you it didn’t keep me in the moment.
Nor did the fact, that once they get all their clothes of, does Cory disclose that he doesn’t have a condom. What was he thinking? Did he seriously think Talia had them in her bedside drawer despite the fact that she had a child living in her home with her? I guess so, because he asked. Then he asked if she thought their daughter had any and Talia responds by saying she wouldn’t feel comfortable looking through Wendy’s stuff for such a reason. I thought my head was going to explode. So instead they fool around as they should have done when they were teenagers, without penetration but with orgasm. Which was a nice moral to that story, I thought.
Then they take a road trip to see Tina, so Talia can evaluate her and recommend a place her to live in Brogan Point. Mind you, throughout the book, Talia had been steadfast in her dislike for Tina. She remembers how unreliable Tina was with infant Wendy. She remembers the pot smoking. She remembers the horrible herbal teas brewed from herbs Tina grew in the backyard and then what happens? Talia invites Tina to move into her home with her. I could’ve pulled my hair out. The result of that? Cory tells her he loves her, she confesses her love back and he proposes. All wrapped up. HEA Rather sudden and abrupt, if you ask me.
Which you didn’t, but that’s the joy of a book review. I get to dump my unsolicited, gratuitous opinion upon an unsuspecting public.
Oh yes, I forgot about the book cover… these are people in their late thirties. Does that cover look like people in their thirties? No, not to me either. More like a Young Adult couple.
And this book is definitely a set up for number six in the series. Too much talk about that juke box will do next.
End result: gonna delete this from my e-reader and ask for a refund. This is not worth keeping and I want my $3.99 back
Ok I didn’t absolutely hate it.
I was prepared to completely love it because (1) I love the second chance trope; (2) I loved a previous story in this serious about the magic jukebox; (3) what’s not to love in a matchmaking magic jukebox, after all.
When I read a book, though, there are a few thing that are going to 100% annoy me (1) the feeling that the author did not employ a professional editor; (2) the sense that the author published a first draft; (3) when the cover artist clearly did not read the story; (4) when the author is more interested in using the story as a set-up for more books in the series then in telling this particular story; (5) and when the author clearly slept through all of her or his English classes beginning in elementary school and ending in college, if attended, because this is a book written by someone who has not business ever writing and if who persisted in that delusion, should certainly not have been published. Moondance solidly failed on the first three with a hint of number four.
Let’s talk about what I liked. At first glance, I really liked Talia, Cory and their daughter, Wendy. Love the name “Wendy.” Love meeting everyone in an Indian restaurant because I love Indian food. Love that Talia did not know she would be seeing her former husband, Corey, for the first time since she divorced him and that Wendy had fooled her. At first I thought Wendy was trying to trick them to get back together but I soon realized all she wanted was her dad around for the special events of her last week of high school. Which, by the way, is way cooler than the last week of my high school and I am so jealous.
We know from the blurb that this is a second chance story. Talia and Cory were high school lovers who got pregnant and married. It didn’t work, they divorced, it’s years later. I like a good second chance story. So many of us do. I don’t know about you but I’d like to think that when I fell in love with that guy in high school, back when I was still fairly innocent and untainted by the world, that that choice was The One.
I also love the song “Moondance.” Who doesn’t? I’ve never met a woman who told me she hated it. I think it might be the most romantic song ever written. “Fantabulous” surely should have made its way into the common parlance by now.
As for a magic jukebox as a matchmaker… well, I don’t know about you but my own choices didn’t work out so well for me and I willing to believe a jukebox knows better than I who is my Mr. Right. Owning that I am strictly hetero here. Although I did say, wistfully, to a very dear friend of the female type, when we were moaning our failures with boyfriends, that it was a shame we couldn’t make ourselves be lesbians because we were such good friends, it’s shame we couldn’t take care of each other’s sexual needs. She spit up her wine all over me. Yeah, I’d entrust my love life to a jukebox.
Clearly, Talia and Cory had grown up quite a bit since the time they divorced, Cory more so than Talia, as is often the case. We don’t exactly know how they accomplished this, it’s just a given.
Sadly, what I didn’t like far outnumbered what I liked. It is All Too Obvious that Arnold did not employ a professional editor. I suspect she relied on spell check. A professional editor would have caught errors such as “much” instead of “mulch” or “they” instead of “the” or even “the” instead of “they.” The book was riddled with properly spelled words that were quite obviously the wrong words. Which is why I think Arnold used spell check rather than an editor. I think even Beta readers would have caught these errors.
I said above one of the things that annoy me is the sense that the author published a first draft and I very strongly have that feeling. The backstory is a complex one and is very awkwardly interwoven. For instance, in the first chapter Talia walks into the restaurant, sees Cory and there is all this exposition. All this reflection. All this memory. Sure some of it would make sense but there is just too much to fit in between the time it takes to walk inside the restaurant and walk to the table. Wendy says “Surprise” followed by pages and pages of narrative instead of what would be the more normal behavior of greeting Wendy’s boyfriend, saying something polite to the ex-husband, etc. Granted we have to have the backstory, placing it here just felt too awkward to me.
Wendy and boyfriend naturally have after-dinner plans and off they go, leaving Talia and Cory at the Punjab Palace. Cory suggests they go out for a drink which is the segue to expose them to the magic jukebox. That seemed awkward to me because they were already in a restaurant and, presumably, beverages were available there. But under the influence of the Magic Jukebox they must be, so no matter how silly the segue, it must happen.
The jukebox plays “Moondance.” Why “Moondance,” I kept wondering? It seemed to have no connection to their past. It wasn’t “their song.” It did not seem to influence Talia quite as much as Cory but it did bother her.
Although not as much, I thought, as the idea that Cory want to move his mother, who had a stroke to Brogan’s Point, MA and hire Talia’s company as Tina’s caregivers. Talia is very much opposed to this. She doesn’t like Tina and doesn’t want her around. Talia really dislikes Tina for excellent reasons. When Talia and Cory were teenagers, married and pregnant, Cory was going to college. They were living with Tina. After Wendy was born, Talia had a job at the convenience store and Tina watched the baby. More like neglected her, didn’t change her diaper, smoked pot in front of her, let her stay up to all hours, and other forms of benign neglect.
Talia says she doesn’t want Tina in Brogan’s Point and she doesn’t want her as a client. Cory tells her it is not up to her. She accepts this as a given and I am all, what? You are going to let him walk all over you? And then what happens? They kiss. She doesn’t like his plans, doesn’t like the way he is treating her, divorced him because he was a lousy husband, yet because of “Moondance” kisses him. Nope. Not buying it.
Which triggers the memory of when they first met, etc etc and this takes place in the space of the kiss? Cause there are lots of pages there.
Meanwhile, Talia goes home and remembers her life after she left Cory, raising Wendy and living at her Grammy’s place. She couldn’t go to her parents because good Roman Catholics that they are, when she told them she was pregnant, they had kicked her out the door.
Gotta tell you, the backstory is stuck in here in the most awkward place in all sorts of bits and pieces.
Meanwhile Cory schemes how to get Talia back in bed with him and plots his secret agenda which he never bothered to tell Talia about. Not only was he moving Tina to Brogan’s Point but a branch of Cory’s company is moving to Boston and Cory will be running it. No, he just allows Talia to think he is dumping his mother on her.
Of course they have sex. But before that happens, she takes him to her bedroom where Talia does a lengthy, and I mean, mental lengthy review of her bedroom decor. Seems totally misplaced to me. If she is finding Cory unbearably attractive that against everything she has been telling herself so far she is still going to sleep with him, why on earth would she be thinking about how her bedroom is decorated? Gotta tell you it didn’t keep me in the moment.
Nor did the fact, that once they get all their clothes of, does Cory disclose that he doesn’t have a condom. What was he thinking? Did he seriously think Talia had them in her bedside drawer despite the fact that she had a child living in her home with her? I guess so, because he asked. Then he asked if she thought their daughter had any and Talia responds by saying she wouldn’t feel comfortable looking through Wendy’s stuff for such a reason. I thought my head was going to explode. So instead they fool around as they should have done when they were teenagers, without penetration but with orgasm. Which was a nice moral to that story, I thought.
Then they take a road trip to see Tina, so Talia can evaluate her and recommend a place her to live in Brogan Point. Mind you, throughout the book, Talia had been steadfast in her dislike for Tina. She remembers how unreliable Tina was with infant Wendy. She remembers the pot smoking. She remembers the horrible herbal teas brewed from herbs Tina grew in the backyard and then what happens? Talia invites Tina to move into her home with her. I could’ve pulled my hair out. The result of that? Cory tells her he loves her, she confesses her love back and he proposes. All wrapped up. HEA Rather sudden and abrupt, if you ask me.
Which you didn’t, but that’s the joy of a book review. I get to dump my unsolicited, gratuitous opinion upon an unsuspecting public.
Oh yes, I forgot about the book cover… these are people in their late thirties. Does that cover look like people in their thirties? No, not to me either. More like a Young Adult couple.
And this book is definitely a set up for number six in the series. Too much talk about that juke box will do next.
End result: gonna delete this from my e-reader and ask for a refund. This is not worth keeping and I want my $3.99 back
January 8, 2018
Love this story
Every Magic Jukebox story is a delight. Cory, Melissa, Andrew, Tina, Grammy...and our heroine all ring true. Tenderness, passion, the absurd, and if course comedy are included...as in real life.
Every Magic Jukebox story is a delight. Cory, Melissa, Andrew, Tina, Grammy...and our heroine all ring true. Tenderness, passion, the absurd, and if course comedy are included...as in real life.
December 11, 2019
Fantabulous!
I loved this book! So many emotional connections for me! And I've always loved Moondance by Van Morrison so it keeps running through my brain. 👍👍💞💘
I loved this book! So many emotional connections for me! And I've always loved Moondance by Van Morrison so it keeps running through my brain. 👍👍💞💘
April 24, 2021
Very good!
November 6, 2022
A chance to reconnect after years apart drives this caring, introspective tale about second chances.
May 25, 2021
Just the idea of a magic jukebox that plays music randomly that two someone's in the bar need to hear
makes me happy. I keep reading the books in this series and Judith Arnold doesnt disappoint with the stories. I. Didnt know this song so it wasnt as familiar this time, in the others I was humming along. But I still love the concept and I'm on to the next book.
makes me happy. I keep reading the books in this series and Judith Arnold doesnt disappoint with the stories. I. Didnt know this song so it wasnt as familiar this time, in the others I was humming along. But I still love the concept and I'm on to the next book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews