Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Beneath the Stain Part 6
AUTHOR: Amy Lane
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 75 pages
BLURB:
For as long as Trav Ford has known the Sanders boys, one name has haunted the entire band. Their first lead guitarist and Mackey’s first lover has left a stamp on the kids he’s known as family, and now Grant has one last chance to hurt the people Trav cares for the most. Except Grant isn’t the monster Trav made him out to be, and coming home is harder on the band—and Trav—than he ever could have anticipated. When Trav is confronted with the reality of what Mackey and his brothers left behind—and with what they’re about to lose—he has to seriously reconsider if he’s strong enough to deal with everything that Mackey and Outbreak Monkey have come to represent. Fortunately for Trav, Mackey’s learned a lot in the past year, and one of his best lessons is how to hold on to the people he loves.
REVIEW:
Holy crap, get out your tissues… This one will make you cry.
I have had a running joke with Amy Lane for some time about her ability to make me cry, we refer to it as the Make-Vicki-Cry-Crown. That crown was firmly in Amy’s possession for several years, until a month or so ago when I read a book by a different author that made me cry more than any other book had. I took the metaphoric crown from Amy and gave it to the other author. With this part of Beneath the Stain, Amy has clearly won her crown back. I was in tears at the 7% point, and it continued from there. Slight pauses occasionally, but I had actual tears on my face 4 times, and was misty eyed pretty much the whole time, in what is probably a less than 100 page book. Not bad at all! Then I cried again this morning, while chatting with Amy on Facebook about what-could-have-beens. So yah. It’s a tearjerker.
This will get a bit spoilerish, it’s hard to talk about this part without referring to things that happened in previous parts. I’m sorry for that!
In the last part we learned that Grant is dying. The band, plus Sheila and Briony head to Tyson after their last performance, to spend time with him before it’s too late. You can imagine for yourself how brutal this is. Grant and Mackey were teenaged lovers, Grant broke Mackey’s heart which literally came close to killing him. Trav saved Mackey’s life, again I use the word literally, he never would have survived to come home to Grant now, if Trav hadn’t been there. But, on the other hand, where would Grant be if he had gone with the band, stayed with Mackey, and then gotten sick? That’s a whole different story possibility. It’s all drama and pain, and so very fucked up, between Grant, Mackey, and Trav. Trav so wants to hate Grant for what he did to Mackey, but how do you hate a man at the end of his life? Trav finally sees Tyson the shithole town, as it was for these boys, and how Grant gave in and stayed. It all makes sense now to him. So he’s stuck, wanting to hate Grant and not being able too.
There is the big horrible drama going on with Grant, but there are other stories as well. Briony is sick, and the boys are so sweet with her. They stay with their mother and Cheever, the little bastard, and something comes of that. There is a great scene of bonding between the band members, that might involve a jail cell. That was the one bit of humor in this part….The extra part at the end is beautiful, and I was so surprised, never saw what happens coming, but it was absolutely perfect. Not sure how I didn’t see it! There is no sex in this part, we got the rock star sex in part 5 and now we get the angst in this one.
How many times and ways can I say this series is amazing? The serial release plan is awful and wonderful. It’s making me slow down and savor each part, and calming my broken heart down, but it’s horrible to wait a week for the next and final piece. I think when the full book comes out I’ll have to read it again, just so I can truly appreciate it. The writing is perfect, skillfully showing us the fucked up messed caused by the bigotry and hatred of people. I just re-read Mourning Heaven by Amy Lane, it has a similar feeling to this one, at least as far as the town goes. Small towns destroying their own children with the stupidity of adults. They both show how fucked up kids can be from what they learn not only from their parents, but the community around them.
I feel like I am repeating myself with each part, but it is what it is. You have to read this book, in any form. Get the parts before they go away, or wait until the full release, but you have to get it somehow. It’s worth the price, each part is just about 100 pages, and there are seven parts. That is a lot of beautiful book from an amazing author.
Here are my reviews of the first five parts:
RATING: 
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