5th December 2020 – Bebe’s Reads
Get it on Amazon | Lilac
I, Braxton Fawn, am the luckiest girl alive.
Or so the world keeps telling me.
Every so often, gods walk the earth. This time they came as musicians. When Bound loses its lead guitarist, yours truly is chosen to fill his shoes. From dive bars to the big stage, my instant claim to fame is nothing short of a fairytale. The only problem?
My new bandmates.
Jaded, gorgeous, and ridiculously talented—they’re determined to turn my dream into a nightmare. It’s no secret I wasn’t their first choice. I wasn’t even their last. The label wants a new image, Bound wants me gone, but I’ve got my own agenda.To succeed I have to survive a world tour, public scrutiny, and idols turned enemies. But the biggest threat of all isn’t a meticulous front man, a narcissistic bassist, and a drummer with too many secrets.
It’s me.
Somehow, I must resist the temptation of Houston Morrow, Loren James, and Jericho Noble.
It seemed easy enough when I boarded their tour bus, but it only took one city for the lines we’d drawn to blur.
Only ninety-nine more to go.
I have so many conflicting thoughts about this book.
If you’ve read my reviews before, you know I usually like breaking things down into pros and cons. For this one I’m just going to let it all spill out though, because there’s a lot to get through. Warning: here there be spoilers.
⤅ PLOT
Braxton Fawn (which has to be the ugliest name I’ve ever seen on a character) is a 22-year-old aspiring musician. One night, she gets a call from her friend Oni, who’s a music agent, with g, the groundbreaking news: the world-famous rock band Bound are looking for a fourth member after the recent death of their guitarist. And Oni has put her name forward.
Braxton rushes to the meeting, where she meets the three existing band members. They are:
⤅ Houston Morrow, the self-proclaimed leader, who immediately develops a hatred of Braxton.
⤅ Loren James, the blond charmer, who immediately hits on her. And lastly:
⤅ Jericho Noble, the quiet one, who seems the nicest of all.
Houston announces Braxton is off-limits. But Loren loves pushing the boundaries, and one by one Braxton falls into a relationship with all three of them which is complicated by their pasts.
⤅ MY THOUGHTS
✔️ I have to hand it to B.B. Reid: she can craft one hell of a compelling story. I first discovered this when I was reading Fear Me. Objectively, it’s a sh*ttily-written book with countless typos and cringey prose, but SOMEHOW I STILL ENJOYED IT. The prose in Lilac is a lot better for sure; you can tell Reid has developed since her debut. This just means that the book was nice to read on a technical level, and it flowed well.
✔️ Linked to the above: this is a very long, about 170k words. But I think this is a great length. I didn’t find that it dragged at all, and actually if it had been any shorter this would have done a disservice to the story being told.
✔️ My FAVOURITE thing about this story is the depiction of how three men who have never shared a woman before can organically grow into a polyamorous relationship. At the start of the book, Houston, Jericho, and Loren are on the verge of breaking up: their relationships have splintered, they hate each other, and Bound is the only thing keeping together. But slowly they patch up their connection thanks to Braxton. The bulk of the word count is devoted to them transitioning from one-on-one relationships to entering a proper polyamorous relationship, and I like that this is done slowly and realistically.
✔️ There’s a tiny bit of M/M, but most of it (barring one scene) is off-page and the focus is very much on the heroine, which I prefer.
❌ The OW drama is not ideal. Loren has sex with another woman AFTER he’s started flirting with Braxton but BEFORE he has sex with her. I personally was okay with it, because 1) I have a higher tolerance for OW drama in RH novels and 2) as a result of this, Braxton makes Loren wait to have sex with her until after the other two men. But this may be a dealbreaker for you.
❌ The heroine forgives the heroes WAY TOO EASILY. It turns out that Jericho is married (but separated) from his wife Emily, and had nebulous plans to return to her for most of the book. Houston and Loren also didn’t tell Braxton this. She does leave them but IMO there isn’t enough grovelling and she takes them back way too easily, despite her big words about the ‘trust being broken’. In particular I’ve lost ALL respect for Jericho, who looks pathetic.
❌ The bullying subplot at the beginning is weird. It looks like it’s just been shoehorned in so that this book can be called an ‘enemies-to-lovers’ romance. Houston especially is a complete dick to Braxton for. Absolutely. No. Reason???
❌ Linked to the above: her first sex scene (with Houston) is just a bit repulsive. It comes out of NOWHERE (like literally 35% into a very long book?) and immediately after Houston insults her and objectifies her. In fact, he does it before too, which makes me question her level of self-respect that she had sex with him in the first place.
✔️ But when the heroes are being good, they’re very good – besotted, obsessive, etc.
✔️ Also I liked the male POV, which I almost NEVER do. Even though there were four POVs in this book they all felt dissimilar enough from each other that I wasn’t put off.
❌ The drama in the last 10% is like, 0-60 in two milliseconds flat. Emily comes out of nowhere and tries to murder everyone. This isn’t resolved well at all, and having most of the book be character-driven rather than plot-driven means that the action subplot isn’t well integrated into the book as a whole. Instead, it just feels like it’s been stuffed into the end.
✔️ The heroine isn’t a virgin – in fact, she’s experienced and enjoys sex! This is tied into a weird little side plot where she thinks she’s a nymphomaniac, but whatever.
⤅ OVERALL
This is an odd book, because the bits I liked I REALLY liked and the bits I hated I really HATED. Hence the three stars. On balance, I’m glad I read it and I do recommend it, but I’m going to try and scrub the bits I don’t like from my memory.
The Literary Invertebrate 