Book Review: Girl With Guitar (Caisey Quinn)

Title: Girl With Guitar
Series: Kylie Ryans #1
Author: Caisey Quinn
Published: May 22nd 2013
Genre: NA Contemporary Romance
Rating: 4/5

BLURB:
After Kylie’s dad dies in a freak accident, he leaves her with nothing other than her crazy step-mother, Darla, and the ability to play guitar. When Darla kicks Kylie out and she loses her job all in the same day, she hops a bus to Nashville determined to make her late father’s dreams come true. Waitressing and saving her pennies to record a demo, her big break comes when she’s asked to join a tour going down the tubes with once platinum album-selling country music superstar Trace Corbin. But touring with Trace is hardly a dream come true since he’s pretty much drinking his career down the drain. If Kylie can’t pull Trace out of his rut, he’ll pull her and her dreams down with him.

***Mild Spoilers***

REVIEW:
The story:
After Kylie's father dies, following her dreams of being a country music singer is all she has left and she throws everything she has left into making it happen. Although she has big dreams I still felt she had realistic expectations - getting herself setup is her first priority - starting work at a bar to pay rent.

After singing her version of one of famous musician Trace Corbin's songs at an open mike night, she catches the attention of his management team and is offered a spot as a warm up artist. At first Trace is not too trilled to have her along for his tour believing she's just another nobody with little talent, but soon discovers there is a lot more to Kylie than her just her looks. The two get to know each other through their love of music and without realising it, help each other with their personal demons.

The characters:
At first I thought Kylie was going to be a bit of a push over, and although she does makes some bad decisions, she can still manage to stand on her own & take care of herself. She also had a fiery spark that Trace seemed to bring out in her - which I loved!

Trace was a hard character love, but just as difficult to not. With his self destructive behaviour he often hurt the people around him - including Kylie. Trace could be so sweet to Kylie & I believed he truly cared about her. But then (in the word's of Kylie's BFF Lulu) he'd go do or say something so stupid I just wanted to 'junk punch' him! But I could never stay mad at him long and neither could Kylie *sigh*

The romance:
What I loved about Trace & Kylie's relationship, is that she didn't let him push her around. When he was putting the tour at risk (and her chances at making it) she took charge - at one point she pours all his liqueur down the sink. In the past everybody around Trace had only enabled his behaviour. Kylie is exactly what Trace needed - someone to help him & not take any of his crap. And in return Kylie needed the love and affection that Trace gave her. This very much a give & take relationship.

The Witting:
I felt the pacing was handled very effectively - there was never a time where I felt the plot dragged. The plot developed at a steady rate leading up to the climax of the story. I was also pleased to see that Quinn gave this story a proper ending with no major cliff hangers. She has however left some story lines open for the text book, which I'm very much looking forward to.

FINAL WORD:
I really enjoyed this one, the music setting was interesting and although Trace was difficult to love sometimes I still really enjoyed the relationship between him & Kylie. It will be interesting to see how they deal with touring separately in the sequel.

CONTENT:
Sexuality: strong / descriptive sex scenes
Violence: mild
Language: medium / several f*ck
Drugs & alcohol: medium / Trace is a heavy drinker

4 comments:

  1. Great review Amy. And I completely agree. I had some difficulties with Trace in this book, but I am holding out that he's going to really step up and be the man that Kylie needs in the next books.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I think he made some mistakes, but towards the end he started to win me over. Hopefully in the next book he's grown even more and can that awesome hero I know he can be!

      Delete
  2. I bought this book, I saw it on someone's blog and I decided to get it. I can't read your review since it has some spoilers but I'm glad to be seeing this book around more.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah I've seen a few more positive reviews popping up for this one lately, which is great! It was a great book and hopefully the start of a great series!

      Delete

Thanks for stopping by & feel free to leave a comment...I love comments!!! And I'm always happy to spread the comment love around :)