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A review by jugglingpup
Music from Another World by Robin Talley
3.0
To see more reviews check out MI Book Reviews.
I got an ARC of this book.
I keep reading Talley and thinking that things will go better. The issue is so far Talley and I have not clicked perfectly. I feel like one day we will, but today was not that day. The closest Talley and I came to clicking was the very first book I read by her that had so many trans issues.
This book did not have trans issues, but it had another large issue. If you read enough of my reviews you will see a trend. This is one of those things that comes up time and time again: dual narration. When it is pulled off, it is AMAZING. When it isn’t, it can sink a book. Talley was not able to pull it off in this one. I could not tell the girls apart. This hindered any shipping I could do and it made the story feel super slow and bogged down.
I LOVE slow burn romance that takes place solely through letters and texts. You would think that this would be for me, but it wasn’t. I just didn’t see how the girls fell in love. Was it because they were the only ones that they felt they could be honest with? Like I can understand that emotional intimacy can be difficult to distinguish from romantic love, but that was it. There was no other reason that I could see that they were into each other. They met out of nowhere and then were awkward (but then later in the book, it said that they couldn’t remember a time when they had been awkward which just further took me out of the book). The whole in person romance was just rushed and felt incredibly fake.
The religious abuse just felt over the top and annoying, which is pretty great. The people they were facing were caricatures. Anita Bryant would have been proud. So while I didn’t enjoy the plot, I have to say that it was handled pretty well.
I am getting real tired of queer stories being sad and miserable. I understand this is historical fiction, but come on. I didn’t need or want to sit through hundreds of pages of angst about coming out and being kicked out. There are already so many terrible fates for queer people written, I need happy stories. Bad things can happen, but when the bad things dominate the story I sort of check out now especially when the emotions aren’t coming through the writing in a way that actually makes me care that these things are happening.
One day Talley is going to write the perfect book for me. I can feel it. Once we get on the same wavelength there will be nothing stronger than that connection. We just haven’t gotten there yet.
I got an ARC of this book.
I keep reading Talley and thinking that things will go better. The issue is so far Talley and I have not clicked perfectly. I feel like one day we will, but today was not that day. The closest Talley and I came to clicking was the very first book I read by her that had so many trans issues.
This book did not have trans issues, but it had another large issue. If you read enough of my reviews you will see a trend. This is one of those things that comes up time and time again: dual narration. When it is pulled off, it is AMAZING. When it isn’t, it can sink a book. Talley was not able to pull it off in this one. I could not tell the girls apart. This hindered any shipping I could do and it made the story feel super slow and bogged down.
I LOVE slow burn romance that takes place solely through letters and texts. You would think that this would be for me, but it wasn’t. I just didn’t see how the girls fell in love. Was it because they were the only ones that they felt they could be honest with? Like I can understand that emotional intimacy can be difficult to distinguish from romantic love, but that was it. There was no other reason that I could see that they were into each other. They met out of nowhere and then were awkward (but then later in the book, it said that they couldn’t remember a time when they had been awkward which just further took me out of the book). The whole in person romance was just rushed and felt incredibly fake.
The religious abuse just felt over the top and annoying, which is pretty great. The people they were facing were caricatures. Anita Bryant would have been proud. So while I didn’t enjoy the plot, I have to say that it was handled pretty well.
I am getting real tired of queer stories being sad and miserable. I understand this is historical fiction, but come on. I didn’t need or want to sit through hundreds of pages of angst about coming out and being kicked out. There are already so many terrible fates for queer people written, I need happy stories. Bad things can happen, but when the bad things dominate the story I sort of check out now especially when the emotions aren’t coming through the writing in a way that actually makes me care that these things are happening.
One day Talley is going to write the perfect book for me. I can feel it. Once we get on the same wavelength there will be nothing stronger than that connection. We just haven’t gotten there yet.