Taut Strings by Gabrielle SandsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Taut Strings, Tight Plot
I’d probably give this book 4.5 ⭐️ if I could.
I’ve had this in my mental TBR list for a while as even before it was published the blurb interested me. I wish I’d read it as soon as it came out because it’s a fantastic book. You would never think it was a debut novel as it’s so well written.
Adeline is 21 and the guardian of her 17-year-old sister as they were orphaned 2 years previously. Adeline gave up her dreams of a music career several years before she lost her parents, but becoming the sole guardian of a teenage girl probably didn’t help any. Still, she had a hobby band where she played rhythm guitar and sang lead vocals, but it was mainly a covers band.
One night she was playing at one of their biggest gigs when they realised that Bleeding Moonlight, the local boys who hit the big time, were in the audience listening to her play one of their songs. The band had come back to the small town where they grew up to bury their lead guitarist and to record what they decided was to be their last album, their tribute to their deceased bandmate and the last material he wrote. The only thing they were missing was a lead guitarist and Adeline looked like she could be the session musician of their dreams.
This feels like it should be a predictable rock romance/RH book, but it’s anything but predictable. I really wasn’t sure how it was all going to get resolved at several points in the course of the narrative. This was a beautifully paced book, with layers of emotion and plot being carefully unveiled with each turn of the page.
The author takes a seemingly simple idea and breathes life into it by making her characters believable. The real strength and beauty in this book is the character creation and development. Each character has a fully realised personality and history and though we don’t get to see all of that history, you feel like it’s there. The characters don’t just start when you begin chapter one. Each character has strengths and flaws in a way that feels real. With such strong characters, the carefully subtle plot works really well.
This isn’t a book filled with big explosive reveals and denouncements. It has a few charged emotional moments but they aren’t things that make you drop your jaw in shock. Everything builds on what has gone before in a way that makes the next moment inevitable rather than surprising.
This isn’t a big showy book, but I like it more because of that. There is passion and heat which are explicitly articulated but it isn’t the focus of the book, which is always the emotion. The emotions aren’t all about the romance either. The individuals in the band and Adeline all have their own issues surrounding their work and where they are going from that point forward. That future and their friendships are as important as the romantic feelings they might have.
I am definitely interested in the next book in the series, which covers Cole’s little sister and it appears to be set before this book takes place. This author has tonnes of promise and I can’t wait to watch her develop.
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