Scan barcode
A review by katheastman
Please Don't Stop the Music by Jane Lovering
5.0
I ignored everyone and everything around me until I had read Please Don’t Stop the Music from cover to cover in one sitting. It wasn’t only the promised Dark Secrets that were responsible for this, but also the characters. In Jane’s book, they’re refreshingly different to the ones you often find between the pages of a romantic novel. The characters in Please Don’t Stop the Music are very much an “alternative” cast: they certainly don’t have perfect lives, nor are they perfect themselves. These are flawed human beings with problems, handicaps or baggage. I loved that about them because they were all the more real for it.
The main character, Jemima Hutton, is a gifted jewellery artist who wields sarcasm about her like a ferocious ninja in skinny jeans. This defence mechanism helps protect someone who is a flawed and deeply troubled young woman, continually on the run from her past. While searching for stockists for her jewellery, she meets the enigmatic Ben Davies, who now works in a music shop but was once in an indie band. As their friendship develops, it threatens to upset her coping mechanisms and force her to share her secrets with him. But Ben’s also keeping a secret of his own and Jemima has a similar impact on him. How he feels about this is cleverly conveyed through extracts from a journal he keeps.
Please Don’t Stop the Music is funny, poignant and heartbreaking in places. I really felt for the characters, both because of what they had gone through and what they were having to deal with now, as a result of their pasts. Jane handles her characters’ stories with great understanding and dexterity and, for me, it’s a fantastic example of how to sensitively incorporate disabilities and troubled backgrounds into romantic fiction. Before you start thinking that the book is altogether too dark for you, it’s not. I laughed a lot too. Jane puts her wonderfully unique sense of humour to very effective use throughout.
Please Don’t Stop the Music was an exhilarating and lively read because it was so full of life. Real life. It feels like a fresh take on romantic fiction because this is something that could happen to people that you or I might know in the real world. It’s a book about friendships, about how they change, grow and develop, and, most of all, about how important they are, and can be, in all our lives. I know that I’ll remember these characters and their story long after closing the book on them. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, my first Jane Lovering novel, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next. In the meantime, I’ll be checking out her back catalogue until the next exciting new release from her.
The main character, Jemima Hutton, is a gifted jewellery artist who wields sarcasm about her like a ferocious ninja in skinny jeans. This defence mechanism helps protect someone who is a flawed and deeply troubled young woman, continually on the run from her past. While searching for stockists for her jewellery, she meets the enigmatic Ben Davies, who now works in a music shop but was once in an indie band. As their friendship develops, it threatens to upset her coping mechanisms and force her to share her secrets with him. But Ben’s also keeping a secret of his own and Jemima has a similar impact on him. How he feels about this is cleverly conveyed through extracts from a journal he keeps.
Please Don’t Stop the Music is funny, poignant and heartbreaking in places. I really felt for the characters, both because of what they had gone through and what they were having to deal with now, as a result of their pasts. Jane handles her characters’ stories with great understanding and dexterity and, for me, it’s a fantastic example of how to sensitively incorporate disabilities and troubled backgrounds into romantic fiction. Before you start thinking that the book is altogether too dark for you, it’s not. I laughed a lot too. Jane puts her wonderfully unique sense of humour to very effective use throughout.
Please Don’t Stop the Music was an exhilarating and lively read because it was so full of life. Real life. It feels like a fresh take on romantic fiction because this is something that could happen to people that you or I might know in the real world. It’s a book about friendships, about how they change, grow and develop, and, most of all, about how important they are, and can be, in all our lives. I know that I’ll remember these characters and their story long after closing the book on them. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, my first Jane Lovering novel, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next. In the meantime, I’ll be checking out her back catalogue until the next exciting new release from her.