Reviewer: Rowena Rock Star by Roslyn Hardy Holcomb
Publisher: Genesis Press
Publication Date: September 1st, 2006
Genres: Contemporary Romance
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How does an LA sophisticate like rock star Bryan Spencer woo a small-town African-American girl like Callie Lawson?
Bryan has come to a small Alabama town to recover after the death of his best friend. The town is suffocating him until he meets Callie, triggering a contest between LA sin and Southern Sunday School. Bryan and Callie must overcome racial issues, the treacherous nature of the entertainment industry and the clash between urban sophistication and rural values if they are to stay together.
I won this book over at Is That a Stake In Your Pocket? and would like to thank Devon for being so kind as to send it to me, THANKS DEVON!!! =)
Now on to my review…
I really wanted to like this book, I read all sorts of great reviews on this book and had such high hopes but I don’t know what went wrong because I just couldn’t get excited about the story, the characters and the storyline. The plot was just too sugary for me.
It started out really slow for me. I mean, I liked Callie right from the very beginning but I wasn’t as wowed with Bryan as I usually am with heroes of any book. I kept hoping that the book would get better and though it did get better, I still wasn’t wowed over it.
I couldn’t get passed the one dimensional characters, neither Callie or Bryan spoke to me, I couldn’t really relate to them. I didn’t feel that connection with their characters that I do when I’m reading a book that I really love.
There wasn’t really anything wrong with the book though, it was a pleasant enough book but it just didn’t grab me the way other books do. I can’t really bad mouth the book or say that it really sucked because it didn’t. It just wasn’t my thing I guess.
Although, there were a lot of times where I wanted to punch Callie in her nose for just all the crap she put Bryan through. Yeah, I get that she was embarrassed after what happened and I even get that she needed a bit of space to evaluate just how important her relationship to Bryan was but after she was over all of that, after she knew that the people around her supported her and didn’t think any of what happened was true, when she saw Bryan’s declaration of love for her and everything he did to try to fix things with her, she knew she still loved him and still she played dumb with him…the whole she’s black and he’s white thing got on my nerves a bit but that’s not the author’s fault because that gets on my nerves in real life too, it’s real and it happens so it’s right.
But by the end of the book, after Bryan is back and is trying to make things right with her and she’s still holding him at arms length, even though she loves him with all that she is, it just sort of rode my nerves and I ended up liking Bryan a whole lot more than I liked Callie and overall I thought the book was just, good. It was a good story but it just wasn’t my thing.
Sorry Devon, I really wanted to like this book but it fell short of that for me. I’m not giving up on Roslyn Hardy Combs though, you readers should try the book out, you might like it. Lots of other people did.
Grade: 3 out of 5