Review: "Play for Me" by Céline Keating
Note: This ebook was provided by She Writes Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Lily Moore is a forty-nine-year-old wife and mother who works at a video production company. She experiences more than what could be construed as "empty nest syndrome" when she and her husband say goodbye to their son Colby as he begins college. Her husband Stephen doesn't go through the feeling of loss that Lily does and the only thing that appears to distract her is the music played by a performing duo while at a concert her son invites her to. While the singer is good, it's the guitarist who has absolutely mesmerized her with his haunting melodies. Jackson "JJ" Johnson is gifted and Lily feels drawn to him.
What follows is Lily's incessant need to constantly be surrounded by JJ's music and makes it a point to buy his CD and any CDs that include him as the guitarist. She attends his concerts and becomes a fixture of sorts. When she's caught filming one concert without permission, lead singer Blaise Raleigh rips into her but then invites Lily to join them on tour in order to put together a film about her. Seeing it as an opportunity to spend more time with JJ, Lily puts her life on hold and follows Blaise and JJ. As they move from city to city, Lily sees nothing but JJ, losing sight of Stephen, Colby, and the life she left behind.
Play for Me is a novel by Céline Keating about a woman named Lily whose life goes in a completely different direction when she hears the guitar playing of a musician named JJ. She has what appears to be the ideal life but to her, it has lost meaning when her son Colby goes off to college. It's almost as if she loses her purpose, no longer able to be the mother she was when Colby was living at home. Even as her husband Stephen tries to refocus her energies by buying her a video camera and encouraging her to get back to the creative side she's put on hold for years, nothing calls to her like JJ and his enchanting music.
The author's writing is exquisite and she was able to put together the story of a woman's search for self and purpose, one with depth and complexity. The thing is, and this pains me to write this, I had no connection with the lead character I'm sorry to say that I felt absolutely nothing for her at any point in the story and this has nothing to do with the cheating angle in the book. She just seemed more like a stalker fan in the first half of the story and by the time we begin to dig a little deeper as to her motivations for her actions, I simply had stopped trying to feel something, anything, for her. Yup, I admit it. I gave up on her.
Was Lily selfish? Yes, she was, but it is possible that in her quest to have some sort of better footing on her life as it was now, she did what she felt was necessary for herself, not sparing any or much thought to how it would affect her marriage or her job. Sometimes, we all make choices that other people don't agree with but we think it's what's best for us. Whether those choices prove to be wrong or right, they're part of the journey we take and lessons should be learned along the way. While I wish I enjoyed this more, I suggest you give it a try yourselves because every reading experience is different. Play for Me gets three stars. ♥
Date Read: 08 May 2015
Learn more about Céline Keating here.
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