What was the point?
My biggest pet peeve about this book was that all the band mates POV’s had the exact same voice, it was impossible to tell them apart without looking at the chapter heading or weeding it out by looking at who else was talking in the scene. - Oh, True, Maddox, and Jericho are talking right now? This must be Zen’s POV.
I also thought it was really weird that they didn’t mention what each person’s role in the band was. It wasn’t mentioned until the 60% mark that Zen was the singer. Still don’t know what the rest of them do. Someone mentioned that they had calloused fingers, but I honestly don’t remember who it was because they all sounded and spoke exactly the same and I don’t know if they had callouses from playing base or guitar.
I also HATE it when authors pat themselves on the back for having interesting character OR BAND NAMES by having other characters make comments like “Oh wow! What a cool/badass name!!!” - FYI Shadow Phoenix is not a “cool” name. I wouldn’t have cared that it was a dumb name, but then you had to have one of your characters point out what a cool name for a band it is.... and well.... just 😑
Last complaint, the guys need for revenge over people who had wronged them can across as catty/bitchy and not very masculine. Just the way they talked about it felt very mean girls, and took me out of the story.
After all the bitching, I will say that the writing wasn’t bad - and if it had been one POV or if the different POV’s had felt like different people I think I would have been less annoyed by the other stuff. The sexy scenes were really good, especially the threesome.
I think I went into this thinking it would be a full story, and what I got was a “before they were famous slice of life” type deal. - I might have enjoyed it more if I had read the other books first, maybe? Because there really was no point or character arch for any of the guys, except maybe True (?), and that was frustrating. By the 80% mark I was skimming to get to the end because I was tired of these dudes trying too hard to be tough. - I may check out the next book, but I’m not sure. I feel like there is promise here, but this book left me feeling annoyed.