Review: Hope & Harmony: A Music Romance Anthology
Note: An advance reader copy (ARC) was provided by the authors.
Hope & Harmony is a multi-author anthology with music as the central theme of each short story included. (Well, save for one, but more on that later.) There are fourteen stories, and it was a good mix of different tales, with two M/M romances included, which always gets two thumbs from me.
While I usually save my rating for the end of my review, I'll just go ahead and give it at here at the beginning since this is more of an overall average--four stars. I have an individual rating and a brief review for each of the stories in the anthology, and they're arranged here in order of appearance.
Chords of Destiny by Kaylene Winter - three stars
Hope Kristiansen is a busker with a small following and Alek Bozic is a gaming coder who's got a crush on Hope. A lot of the development of their romance happens off-page, as opposed to experiencing it all alongside them.
Song for Me by Chelle Bliss - 3.5 stars
Madeline Hart is a club singer who has yet to hit it big and Lucca Bruno is a successful songwriter. This was super short yet somewhat engaging. I just wish we found out the outcome of the song they were working on together.
Song in Silence by Stacey Marie Brown - 4.5 stars
Echo is deaf and a drummer and songwriter for Mental Breakdown, while Hendrix Decker was a bass guitarist for The Velvet Kings who is the replacement for Ziggy, Echo's closest friend and a member of Mental Breakdown prior to passing away. I wish this was longer because it was seriously good and I wanted more from the story and this new-to-me author.
Wild Hope by Mari Carr - four stars
Andi Jennings works as a waitress but moonlights as a singer at Pat's Pub--plus has two other jobs--in Baltimore, and Joel McKenna is a music producer from New York in town for meetings. This age-gap romance definitely had me wondering how everything would play out between them going forward.
A Dirty Proposal by Jaine Diamond - four stars
Jude Grayson and Veronica Webber both work for a band called Dirty, he as head of security and her as part of the management team. They also share a son. This is an established couple who went through and overcame a lot, and it was entertaining to see Jude trying to put together a big surprise for Roni.
Catch My Heart by Helen Hardt - four stars
Blaire Cavileri is a classically trained opera singer, and Gunnar Healy is an aspiring rock musician. Theirs was an interesting story about rivals who are paired together and turn out to be unexpectedly perfect as a pop fusion duo. The added sprinkle of suspense courtesy of an obsessed admirer was great.
The Night We Met by Jillian Liota - four stars
Madison Ross was attacked three years prior but doesn't remember anything other than the music; Scott Kelly is a musician who comes across Madi right afterwards. This was a good story about two people who "met" under awful circumstances but are bonded by that one night and the music she inspired.
Rock Encore by Kat Mizera - four stars
Wynter is the younger sister of Harley (Rock On, book four in Rock Harder series) and a former ER nurse. Ross Rocket is the former lead singer of Ross and the Rockets who lost his band, crew, and fiancee while on tour and is now the tour manage for Onyx Knight. This was a good read that was detailed, so it never felt I was missing any information for the sake of length.
Eyes on You by Layla Reyne - four stars
Gino Morelli and Bennett York are both part of a band called Middle Cut and are married to each other but find themselves at a crossroads professionally and personally. I appreciated that this was a complete story, and the cameos from other characters from the author's other novels was a bonus, but I was a tad iffy on how I felt overall because I never really warmed up to Bennett.
Forever Mine by M. Robinson - 2.5 stars
Hayley McKenzie and Joshua Co are high school students, with the latter having a reputation as a player. This story felt disconnected and far-fetched, and it was sadly the only one that didn't fit the music theme of the anthology.
Connected by Becca Steele - 4.5 stars
Jaxon Messier, formerly known as Jay Bowman, was the lead singer of a boy band named Morningside. Curtis Ward is a uni student, works at a music shop in London, and is a drummer for The 2Bit Princes. I very much enjoyed this, thanks to a complete romance that didn't skimp on the details and provided a highly satisfying happily-ever-after for its two main characters.
Idolyze by Rachel Van Dyken - 3.5 stars
Lyric, an up-and-coming music producer, and Johnny Hills, a member of a K-pop group, have a one-night stand, but things get complicated. Theirs is a second-chance romance, and it wasn't a bad read, but it did lack oomph and basically jumps from Lyric and Hills' quickie reconciliation to the epilogue.
The Road to You by Meredith Wild - 4.5 stars
Cora Clark is a traveling busker hoping to make her way to California, and Baron Porter is a developer and businessman currently working on and based in Cape Haven. This was a commendable story with grumpy/sunshine feels to it, where the main male character turns out to be a benefactor of sorts with the means to make his female counterpart's dreams come true.
Words Like Stardust by Julia Wolf - 4.5 stars
Selena Cruz is a highly successful songwriter originally from Queens and Marco Rider is a businessman who studied in Savage U and is looking to diversifying his portfolio by investing in Ocean Studios, which is The Seasons Change's home studio. This was a great way to close out the anthology and having The Seasons Change there felt like such a nice bonus.
Release Date: 28 January 2025
Date Read: 05 January 2025
Learn more about Chelle Bliss, Stacey Marie Brown, Mari Carr, Jaine Diamond, Helen Hardt, Jillian Liota, Kat Mizera, Layla Reyne, M. Robinson, Becca Steele, Rachel Van Dyken, Meredith Wild, Kaylene Winter, and Julia Wolf.
Comments
Post a Comment