Rate: 3 out of 5 stars
When Jackson Rawlings comes out of the closet, he loses everything: from his record label to the self-confidence he needs to perform on stage. Jackson feels as if the world is out to get him. Broken and afraid, he escapes to Hallesford and the ranch he calls home. All he wants is to live out the rest of his life peacefully and out of the spotlight.
But the fates just love interfering in his life.
Marques Lopez is the owner of Phoenix Records, and not only does he hate what happened to Jackson, he feels Jackson Rawlings has plenty more to contribute to the music industry. He ventures into small-town USA to find the singer and when he does, Jackson is a mere fragment of the man he used to be. To make matters worse, Marques’s body and heart step in to present him with a choice between business and pleasure—unless he could have his cake and eat it too…. Jackson Rawling’s farewell concert is in progress when the story starts. We get to experience his inner tumult and his battle to keep a positive outlook when giving his last press conference. He knows his career is over since the moment he came out and his record label dropped him. The fans and his crew, on the other hand, still faithful to Jackson and his music.
After all the goodbyes, Jackson travels with his best friend, Chad, back to their hometown of Hallesford. And from there on, he nurses his broken heart, alone in his ranch. At this point, we get to meet Marques and learn about his family and his plans to save Jackson’s career. When he gets to the ranch, he finds Jackson struggling with his new life circumstances.
Together, they brought back Jackson’s career and established a relationship that moves further than work colleagues. The book ends with an epilogue sealing their HEA.
Country Soul is a hard book to rate. The story starts slow but interesting enough to keep reading. The book is well-written, and the characters are tridimensional and engaging. Unfortunately, I never got a real read for the MCs’ ages, features, or how they got to that point in their lives.
Their first meeting was explosive and sexy. We get to see their initial chemistry and the lust between them. Then, everything fizzles off until the story is halfway through. Their relationship is more than UST, is just distracting. Everything gets narrow down to their time together in the ranch with only essential details of the events unfolding.
By the time the story hits the sixty percent mark, we finally get them together for several heartbeats before a separation happens. The problem here is that we missed the development of their relationship. In a handful of pages, they went from 0 to 100 in the love scale. Their initial lust and UST changes into a love worth writing poems for. The thing is, I wanted to be part of that story, and this book just skipped it.
The beginning works, the middle is murky, and the ending is beautiful. Everything together makes a nice enough book, full of potential to be a great story. It just needed a little push to be what it deserved.
Garrett Leigh created a cover that shows the main characters and reads like a country music book. It’s nice and general, just like the story.
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Book Details:
ebook, 120 pages
Published: February 17, 2016 (2nd Edition), by Dreamspinner Press (1st Ed. published by Silver Publishing, 2011)
ISBN: 978-1-63476-992-1
Edition Language: English
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 