Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Moonlight Becomes You

SERIES:  Lucky Moon #1

AUTHOR:  Piper Vaughn and M.J. O’Shea

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner

LENGTH:  200 pages

BLURB:  

Eleven years ago, Shane Ventura made the biggest mistake of his life when he caved in to pressure from his record label to kick his best friend, Jesse Seider, out of their band, Luck. To this day, Shane has never wanted anyone more, and all the sex and alcohol in the world can’t fill the void Jesse left behind. Not even the prospect of teaming up with Britain’s hottest band, Moonlight, for a massive world tour can get him out of his funk. Then he meets lead singer Kayden Berlin and falls into instant lust.

Kayden may act like he’s not interested, but Shane knows he feels the spark between them. Yet the harder Shane pushes, the more Kayden pulls away, until one explosive night leaves Shane with a broken heart. That seems to be his lot—lucky at everything but love. Shane still has one lesson left to learn, though: when it comes to love, you can’t always leave things to chance.

REVIEW:  

Of all the things that he has ever fucked up, Shane Ventura knows that kicking Jesse Seider out of their band, and out of his life, was the most fucked up of all.  But it has been years since that awful day he chose his brother over his boyfriend, and there is not a lot he can do about it now.  Except get up, go play, go sing, and try to find something worthwhile in all the rock-star crap that orbits around him.  There just seems to be a fucking dearth of anything worthwhile around him…until his band, Luck, joins up with the band Moonlight for a tour and he falls for the hot (and cold) Kayden Berlin.

Unfortunately Kayden seems more likely to want to drown him in the bath, than make out with him.  Not that Shane knows why. Ok, he is a kinda slut. With a drinking problem. And yes there have been drugs, in his past.  But rockstar. Doesn’t that kinda go with the territory?  Except all that shit stopped being fun years ago, and he is starting to wonder what finding, and keeping, something worthwhile will cost him.  And does he even know how to keep someone like Kayden Berlin? I mean…he couldn’t even keep the first guy who loved him…what chance has he got with a guy that hates him?

I am unsure what to say about this book.  It was good, and I honestly don’t have much to complain about…but rock stars aren’t usually my thing, and I think this book may have fell victim to that.  Objectively, this book is great, and if you like rockstars you are going to love it…but I just had a hard time connecting with these guys. Maybe I was just in a funk, who knows. Maybe I just read a good book at the wrong time–which is aggravating, because I think if I read it when I was in the right mood, I would absolutely love it.

The characters in this story were really well written. Kayden’s jump from hot to cold to glacial (than right back to supernova), did a lot to show us just how conflicted he was about Shane, without him ever having to say it.  We don’t get a lot from his point of view, till later on in the story, but that makes a lot of sense with how the story was written.  And I get why he did what he did.  I totally understand it…even if it was kinda an asshole move.  But then, he knows that.  And it is what he did after that made me really start to love him.

And Shane…. Can I just say how odd it is to read a book with a character that has the same name as your younger brother?  After a while I started to forget, but for the first third of the book, yeah, I was totally imagining my bro as Shane, and that was just weird (they are like, totally, in no ways alike…although this Shane does resemble my older brother in a lot of ways, which only makes it all the more odd).  Anyways, seeing as a majority of this story is told from Shane’s pov, you can’t help but sympathize with the guy. Yeah, he made some fucked up decisions (even for the best of reasons), but he has also paid for all that, and you can’t help but hope he finds something worth all the shit he has gone through.  Even if it was shit of his own making.  Watching him struggle, and fail, and then get back up again, was one of the best things about this story.

Nick, though…Nick I kinda wanted to toss off the balcony.  I know he has his own story coming up, and I am looking forward to reading it…but dear god the man is an asshole.  I’m not sure how he goes thru the day without being repeatedly slapped in the face.  Which is kinda a sucky thing to say, given his childhood, but still…totally want to slap him.

And despite my general dislike of flashbacks, the ones in this story didn’t really bug be at all. They did a great job of setting up the whole mess in the present, but still having enough story in and of themselves that I never got bored, or wanted to rush thru them to get back to the “real” story.

The whole mess between Shane/Jesse and Shane/Kayden was played out really well here. Even if it was painful to watch. Cause you can totally see the train wreck coming. Hell, it is train wreck, followed by an avalanche, with just a hint of nuclear explosion.  But I guess that is love, for ya–especially since that love is tied up with regret and hate and hot-as-hell lust.  You throw all those things together and something is bound to blow up–in all the good, bad, and ugly ways.  And it is so good. For us at least. Had to be hell on the guys, though.

So even though I had a hard time gelling with this book, I have to say that it was really good. And I fully intend on picking it back up when I am in the mood for a little rock star craziness, since I am sure that then I will finally see how great it could be.  And even though I have fantasies involving moving buses and Nick’s face, I am totally going to want to read his story.  There has to be something worthwhile under all that ass.  Look and Shane and Kayden, they turned out to be rather nice, after all their crap was dealt with.

RATING:  

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