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Miller Romances #2
Love Notes
Diane has a house, enough clients to pay the bills, a gaming guild poised to make a splash in a competitive arena, and lyrics that might take Broadway by storm—if only she could find the right music. Her neighbor's grandson might be the hottest thing she's ever seen on a mower, but can he really write the music her words deserve?
Connor loves his family, bringing gardens to life, and creating the right music for people who need it. He might not have a great life plan yet, but he'll figure it out eventually. And if his Gran's pretty neighbor needs a song, well, he has plenty of those to share.
All Connor and Diane want from each other is a musical collaboration. She's busy breaking into the next tier of her competition. He doesn’t have the stability he needs to invite anyone else in. But as collaboration becomes attraction and then more, will they finally find that two very different notes can form the perfect harmony?
Connor loves his family, bringing gardens to life, and creating the right music for people who need it. He might not have a great life plan yet, but he'll figure it out eventually. And if his Gran's pretty neighbor needs a song, well, he has plenty of those to share.
All Connor and Diane want from each other is a musical collaboration. She's busy breaking into the next tier of her competition. He doesn’t have the stability he needs to invite anyone else in. But as collaboration becomes attraction and then more, will they finally find that two very different notes can form the perfect harmony?
184 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 15, 2020
10 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Jadelynn Asher
7 books10 followersThe product of not one, but two brilliant (and humble) writing minds, Jadelynn Asher writes stories sure to warm your heart and tickle your romantic soul. We create romantic relationships infused with passion and connection, laughter and maybe just a few tears. We love finding the romance in a variety of settings from contemporary cities to fantasy worlds and invite you to come on our romantic adventures whether in a short story or a novel
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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December 15, 2020This is second in a series and we meet Connor in the first, though only tangentially. You could read these separately just fine, I think, but I could be wrong as I might be too close to them to tell.
So confessions first. I helped write this. In an advisory way, mainly, though more actively for parts I'll describe below. So I won't rate this review or expect anyone else to take it seriously.
Connor came as something of a surprise to me, frankly. He has two loves that are completely unrelated but somehow bound together in his soul in a way that he can't really articulate. Indeed, he's kind of inarticulate in general because words aren't nearly as easy as melodies. Neither of his passions are particularly stable or remunerative so he's doing his best to support those he loves in the ways he knows best. Which I kind of loved about him, because he cares a ton but doesn't think he has much to offer.
Diane was easier to get a handle on. She's an introvert who has found her tribe in her online gaming and is happy with where she is at for now. Her passion for writing songs, the lyrics, has been dormant for a while because she hasn't found the right music to match her dream of making music that matters. She's a bit horrified to find that she has written essentially pop songs but not so snobby that she can't see that Connor is right when he explains. And that starts a collaboration that both come to value more as the story progresses.
Anyway, I hope people will like these two as much as I did. They're very different, but I love how they find ways to make it work. And Attractive Nuisance was an inspired name for Connor's band. Jana nailed that one right out of the gate.
A note about writing songs: I've dabbled with lyric writing for years and my friends are encouraging about it so when it became clear this story would be centered around matching lyrics to music, it naturally fell to me to write the songs. So yes, all the lyrics in this story are mine, for better or worse. So here's the thing; I've been a fan of Taylor Swift since forever. My kids insist that musically, I'm basically a teenage girl and they're not wrong. When it came time to write lyrics that were essentially pop though meant to have meaning, I took a deep dive into Swift's lyrics to mine for patterns and/or ideas. Man was that a mistake! I mean, I'm a trained critic and pull words apart for fun so it didn't take long for me to be buried by her talent. She makes it look easy because she's so prolific and plays with mood and theme in ways that turn out to have more depth and artistry to them the deeper you dig. So that sent me on something of a funk because everything I thought I knew about lyrics were clearly wrong. Being essentially optimistic, however, I got over myself and wrote some lyrics anyway. I think they turned out okay, but who knows, really? But in case you're wondering, this is why the book is dedicated in part to Taylor Swift with all sincerity and respect.
A note about Chaste: This story is a chaste one, with only a couple of kisses. Connor and Diane are aware of how different they are and find themselves in love before they achieve any physical intimacy beyond that.
So confessions first. I helped write this. In an advisory way, mainly, though more actively for parts I'll describe below. So I won't rate this review or expect anyone else to take it seriously.
Connor came as something of a surprise to me, frankly. He has two loves that are completely unrelated but somehow bound together in his soul in a way that he can't really articulate. Indeed, he's kind of inarticulate in general because words aren't nearly as easy as melodies. Neither of his passions are particularly stable or remunerative so he's doing his best to support those he loves in the ways he knows best. Which I kind of loved about him, because he cares a ton but doesn't think he has much to offer.
Diane was easier to get a handle on. She's an introvert who has found her tribe in her online gaming and is happy with where she is at for now. Her passion for writing songs, the lyrics, has been dormant for a while because she hasn't found the right music to match her dream of making music that matters. She's a bit horrified to find that she has written essentially pop songs but not so snobby that she can't see that Connor is right when he explains. And that starts a collaboration that both come to value more as the story progresses.
Anyway, I hope people will like these two as much as I did. They're very different, but I love how they find ways to make it work. And Attractive Nuisance was an inspired name for Connor's band. Jana nailed that one right out of the gate.
A note about writing songs: I've dabbled with lyric writing for years and my friends are encouraging about it so when it became clear this story would be centered around matching lyrics to music, it naturally fell to me to write the songs. So yes, all the lyrics in this story are mine, for better or worse. So here's the thing; I've been a fan of Taylor Swift since forever. My kids insist that musically, I'm basically a teenage girl and they're not wrong. When it came time to write lyrics that were essentially pop though meant to have meaning, I took a deep dive into Swift's lyrics to mine for patterns and/or ideas. Man was that a mistake! I mean, I'm a trained critic and pull words apart for fun so it didn't take long for me to be buried by her talent. She makes it look easy because she's so prolific and plays with mood and theme in ways that turn out to have more depth and artistry to them the deeper you dig. So that sent me on something of a funk because everything I thought I knew about lyrics were clearly wrong. Being essentially optimistic, however, I got over myself and wrote some lyrics anyway. I think they turned out okay, but who knows, really? But in case you're wondering, this is why the book is dedicated in part to Taylor Swift with all sincerity and respect.
A note about Chaste: This story is a chaste one, with only a couple of kisses. Connor and Diane are aware of how different they are and find themselves in love before they achieve any physical intimacy beyond that.
December 16, 2020
4.5 stars, but I'm rounding up because it's charming.
Full disclosure: the author team behind Jadelynn Asher is my friend and my husband. So take my review with however many grains of salt you need.
I thoroughly enjoyed this romance between two people who don't know they need the balance the other person supplies. Connor and Diane's different musical talents end up complementing each other, which is most of what I found charming about the story. I especially liked how Diane went into her collaboration with Connor with expectations he utterly dashed, and still had the honesty to admit he was right about the kind of music her lyrics demanded. The scene where he plays the first song he writes for her (it's a pop song) and she gets so upset because she has dreams of writing for Broadway musicals really stuck with me.
My husband wrote all the lyrics for this book. He's written lyrics for me before (for my own books) but I think this was a stretch, because he had to do a lot of research (i.e. listening to HOURS and HOURS of Taylor Swift, some of it moving him to tears--he is, to quote a favorite movie, a major weeper). They're so effective, and I'm totally impressed at his skills.
Very enjoyable, and I look forward to the next book in the Miller Lodge Romances series.
Full disclosure: the author team behind Jadelynn Asher is my friend and my husband. So take my review with however many grains of salt you need.
I thoroughly enjoyed this romance between two people who don't know they need the balance the other person supplies. Connor and Diane's different musical talents end up complementing each other, which is most of what I found charming about the story. I especially liked how Diane went into her collaboration with Connor with expectations he utterly dashed, and still had the honesty to admit he was right about the kind of music her lyrics demanded. The scene where he plays the first song he writes for her (it's a pop song) and she gets so upset because she has dreams of writing for Broadway musicals really stuck with me.
My husband wrote all the lyrics for this book. He's written lyrics for me before (for my own books) but I think this was a stretch, because he had to do a lot of research (i.e. listening to HOURS and HOURS of Taylor Swift, some of it moving him to tears--he is, to quote a favorite movie, a major weeper). They're so effective, and I'm totally impressed at his skills.
Very enjoyable, and I look forward to the next book in the Miller Lodge Romances series.
December 15, 2020
This is such a sweet romance! The world needs more well-written, clean romance.
A girl who’s into gaming meets a guy who enjoys landscaping. He writes music, and she writes lyrics. It’s obviously a match made in heaven! Although anyone who knows musicians knows they can be a little touchy, so sparks fly.
The return to Miller Lodge is a fun scene if you’ve read Discovering You (which I recommend), but the book stands on its own just fine. It’s full of interesting characters who feel absolutely real. I can’t wait to learn more about this extended family!
A girl who’s into gaming meets a guy who enjoys landscaping. He writes music, and she writes lyrics. It’s obviously a match made in heaven! Although anyone who knows musicians knows they can be a little touchy, so sparks fly.
The return to Miller Lodge is a fun scene if you’ve read Discovering You (which I recommend), but the book stands on its own just fine. It’s full of interesting characters who feel absolutely real. I can’t wait to learn more about this extended family!
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December 15, 2020No stars here because this is one of my co-written books.
So what do you say about your own book? That you love it, absolutely, but I can also say this one took a lot more work than the first one. We branched out into the world of writing music which meant Jacob created lyrics for three songs, and we both disappeared down the rabbit hole of what does it mean to create a song and what do you do with it next. The leads were also interesting challenges who both were at this big turning point in their lives as they looked forward to what happens after college and when you're mostly off on your own.
There was a bigger divide to cross in this book and more places where the two are at odds, and those were interesting scenes to write. Their romance isn't smooth, but in the end it creates a beautiful harmony.
So what do you say about your own book? That you love it, absolutely, but I can also say this one took a lot more work than the first one. We branched out into the world of writing music which meant Jacob created lyrics for three songs, and we both disappeared down the rabbit hole of what does it mean to create a song and what do you do with it next. The leads were also interesting challenges who both were at this big turning point in their lives as they looked forward to what happens after college and when you're mostly off on your own.
There was a bigger divide to cross in this book and more places where the two are at odds, and those were interesting scenes to write. Their romance isn't smooth, but in the end it creates a beautiful harmony.
December 15, 2020
Fair warning. I know both of the authors. I'm married to one and good friends with the other.
And second warning. I don't read romances. So I can't speak to any of what is expected in a romance, or the conventions or expectations of the target reader group.
Like previous romances she has worked on, I got to participate in the "what would a guy do" part of the story development. I was a nerd growing up so I don't know if my responses were useful, but I tried. I purchased the kindle version. I find the characters very believable and engaging. I hope you like the book.
And second warning. I don't read romances. So I can't speak to any of what is expected in a romance, or the conventions or expectations of the target reader group.
Like previous romances she has worked on, I got to participate in the "what would a guy do" part of the story development. I was a nerd growing up so I don't know if my responses were useful, but I tried. I purchased the kindle version. I find the characters very believable and engaging. I hope you like the book.
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December 24, 2021This book made me very sad.
1. The writing could greatly improve with a strict editor's touch. There are small, but annoying things: repeated words, repetitive phrases or structures, a few mistakes and some awkwardly mixed metaphors. And then there are bigger items: filler scenes which don't add anything to the story, poor narrative flow segments, which are hard to follow and seem jarring, characters who are very blatantly nothing but scenes setting furniture.
2. I am very saddened on the conceptual level. This book fails the Bechdel test rather spectacularly. And unnecessarily. I wanted to know more about Diane, but all we learn of her is how she fits into the life of and can be useful to her male romantic interest. Why do we still have this problem even when smart thoughtful people are doing the writing? This is terribly frustrating.
3. I did not appreciate all the blatant unchecked manipulation. True, it's hardly surprising given the parental figures we are shown. But while 2 manipulative people trying to outmanipulate each other is not particularly fun for me to read, it would have been much preferred to the messaging of this book:
At about 30%, our "hero" does something that should have earned him at least a "cease and desist" letter, or, preferably, a lawsuit. He gets a compliment from the doormat heroine instead, and, needless to say, never apologizes for the betrayal of her trust and his underhanded manipulative behavior. Now, at around 80%, the heroine does something similar - and why shouldn't she if he seemed to find such behavior acceptable for himself? - and the hero gets his panties in a bunch, yells, rages and storms off with the intention of never speaking to the heroine again. She, being the doormat that she is, ends up grovelling until he decides to be gracious enough to forgive her. And throughout it all his earlier BS never gets called out by anybody! Seriously?
It's ok for him to "know better" and do as he pleases, but not for her? And this is in a story in which the heroine is written as objectively much smarter, wiser and more intellectually and psychologically mature than the hero (I am not sure the authors see her that way, I am just going off of the facts about her they had presented in the book).
At the end there is talk about love, which took me completely by surprise, as I saw no foundation for such deep feelings anywhere earlier.
After finishing this, I honestly think the heroine would have been much better off moving to Idaho or even New York. (What was up with that friendship though? That was so random and weird! Was it just there to establish that the heroine is friendless and desperate for any human company, however inferior? - a perfect target for the manipulative self-centered self-serving jerk of a hero she gets?)
1. The writing could greatly improve with a strict editor's touch. There are small, but annoying things: repeated words, repetitive phrases or structures, a few mistakes and some awkwardly mixed metaphors. And then there are bigger items: filler scenes which don't add anything to the story, poor narrative flow segments, which are hard to follow and seem jarring, characters who are very blatantly nothing but scenes setting furniture.
2. I am very saddened on the conceptual level. This book fails the Bechdel test rather spectacularly. And unnecessarily. I wanted to know more about Diane, but all we learn of her is how she fits into the life of and can be useful to her male romantic interest. Why do we still have this problem even when smart thoughtful people are doing the writing? This is terribly frustrating.
3. I did not appreciate all the blatant unchecked manipulation. True, it's hardly surprising given the parental figures we are shown. But while 2 manipulative people trying to outmanipulate each other is not particularly fun for me to read, it would have been much preferred to the messaging of this book:
At about 30%, our "hero" does something that should have earned him at least a "cease and desist" letter, or, preferably, a lawsuit. He gets a compliment from the doormat heroine instead, and, needless to say, never apologizes for the betrayal of her trust and his underhanded manipulative behavior. Now, at around 80%, the heroine does something similar - and why shouldn't she if he seemed to find such behavior acceptable for himself? - and the hero gets his panties in a bunch, yells, rages and storms off with the intention of never speaking to the heroine again. She, being the doormat that she is, ends up grovelling until he decides to be gracious enough to forgive her. And throughout it all his earlier BS never gets called out by anybody! Seriously?
It's ok for him to "know better" and do as he pleases, but not for her? And this is in a story in which the heroine is written as objectively much smarter, wiser and more intellectually and psychologically mature than the hero (I am not sure the authors see her that way, I am just going off of the facts about her they had presented in the book).
At the end there is talk about love, which took me completely by surprise, as I saw no foundation for such deep feelings anywhere earlier.
After finishing this, I honestly think the heroine would have been much better off moving to Idaho or even New York. (What was up with that friendship though? That was so random and weird! Was it just there to establish that the heroine is friendless and desperate for any human company, however inferior? - a perfect target for the manipulative self-centered self-serving jerk of a hero she gets?)
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December 15, 2020Love Notes is technically book 2 in the Miller Lodge Romances, but in general the books can be read in whatever order. There are some Easter Eggs that might be missed, but it's not a big deal.
When we finished writing Discovering You, we had a few options for the lead Miller in the next book. It was tempting to move to Beth, Jason's younger sister, but in the chronology she's still fairly young and we wanted to give her some space to grow up. So we looked around and landed on Connor, the cousin who drops by to visit a couple times and does some skiing with his cousins.
We have a big chart of all of the family members and knew that Connor's romance would not be as simple as Jason's. Connor comes from a broken home, and has some baggage to deal with, but he also has a good heart and skill with a rake and lawnmower as well as a keyboard.
Diane went through a couple of different iterations before settling into the lyricist and gamer who capture's Connor's interest, but we love the end result.
So thanks for reading. Hopefully you'll love our new couple and the challenges before them as much as we do.
When we finished writing Discovering You, we had a few options for the lead Miller in the next book. It was tempting to move to Beth, Jason's younger sister, but in the chronology she's still fairly young and we wanted to give her some space to grow up. So we looked around and landed on Connor, the cousin who drops by to visit a couple times and does some skiing with his cousins.
We have a big chart of all of the family members and knew that Connor's romance would not be as simple as Jason's. Connor comes from a broken home, and has some baggage to deal with, but he also has a good heart and skill with a rake and lawnmower as well as a keyboard.
Diane went through a couple of different iterations before settling into the lyricist and gamer who capture's Connor's interest, but we love the end result.
So thanks for reading. Hopefully you'll love our new couple and the challenges before them as much as we do.
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March 22, 2021Eligible for a 2021 Swoony Award, to nominate/vote click here: https://tinyurl.com/y593ce67
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews