Seeing Stars

NEW ADULT ROMANCE

Title: Seeing Stars
Author: J. Sterling
Publication date: 03/13/2014
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Cliffhanger: No

I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I believe that one word adequately sums up my feelings about the entire book.

Ugh.

Seriously, just...ugh. I might have to wear an eye patch from now on because I think I pulled a muscle in my right eye from too much eye rolling while reading. (My left eye is a little sore, too, but I don’t think I can pull off two eye patches. Making the one look good will be challenge enough. I definitely won’t look as good as Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill no matter what I do. But I digress…)

First of all, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Rock stars can’t see much of anything when they’re on stage performing. So whenever I read that a hero who is singing and performing his heart out in front of a screaming crowd of thousands (probably with a good portion of women in the front rows flashing their boobs) looks out into the crowd and locks onto the heroine, I’m skeptical to say the least.

via GIPHY

​And still, I’ve read this turd of a plot device more times than I care to count. Recently, even. (*cough* Picture Perfect *cough*) I HATE that it happened here yet again.

But I’m no quitter, so I persevered and read on, even after stumbling into one of my biggest rock star romance pet peeves, only to be smacked in the face by ANOTHER of my romance pet peeves: a bitchy heroine.

After Walker serenades Maddison during his concert, he asks for her phone number. Maddison’s reaction is so far from normal that I had to re-read it a few times to make sure I wasn’t missing something. In a similar situation, I might’ve told the rockstar either, a) No thank you, I’m not interested, or b) Sure! Here you go. Those were the only reasonable responses I could come up with.

But what does our heroine do? Well, she stomps off the stage, of course, in a proper snit that he dare to “diminish their electric moment” onstage by asking for her phone number. Geez, lady, it’s not like he asked you to blow him in the alley behind the concert venue. I don’t think asking for your digits counts is a heinous insult. But, whatever. Once I accepted that I hadn’t missed anything and the heroine was just a bitch, I read on. (What can I say? I’m a masochist, apparently.)

​Maddison allowing her smarmy boss to blackmail her into going out with Walker pissed me off. Where’s your spine, girl?

via GIPHY

And the fact that the author chose to make her boss a smarmy weasel of an LA talent agent? Cliche much?

​Then there’s a “big revelation” about the hero about halfway through the story. I won’t give any details away, but I can say that it was totally lame and made me dislike the heroine even more than I already did. (Which was quite a lot)

​The only thing that made me award this one even 1-star was the fact that Walker wasn’t a stereotypical manwhore of a rockstar. I appreciated that there were no stories about how many groupies Walker had banged. Although, in this case, I might not have been too upset with the thought of Walker giving Maddison the syphilis he picked up from a groupie. But again, I digress...  

All in all, this is a bitter, eye-roll-inducing stew of cliches and annoying crap that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone I liked. Maybe I’d recommend it to someone I didn’t like. But even then, I’d probably feel bad about it.  

Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma?
This book IS the romance stigma. 

Other reading suggestions
For GOOD rockstar romance, read Beat by Vi Keeland or any of the Stage Dive series by Kylie Scott.

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