A warm welcome to author Amy Lane joining us today to talk about her new release “String Boys”.
The Boy Who Babbles By Amy Lane
They were quiet then, and Seth opened his eyes to the damage this could do to Kelly’s life. Kelly’s family. The happy little enclave of people upstairs who had provided Seth with the security his father hadn’t.
“I don’t want you to hate your brother,” he rasped after a few moments of the bus filling their senses.
Kelly looked sideways at him. “That’s between my brother and me,” he said firmly. Then he perked up. “Oh! Weren’t you even curious about camping?”
Seth let out a little grunt of frustration. “There’s a lot going on here!”
Kelly’s burble told him he’d been unintentionally charming, and he’d take that as a win. “Yeah, there is. My folks reserved a campsite near one of those lakes near Tahoe over spring break. They were going to ask your dad if you could come. I think it’s so they have a grown-up kid with each little kid. Personally, I think it’s so they can hold hands in the woods and moon about, but I don’t care. We get to swim in the lake and see bears.”
“I’d settle for deer,” Seth said practically. “Why bears?”
“I wanna see it all. I wanna see bears and deer and elk and birds and eagles and hawks and fish. I wanna see a hawk catch a fish while dive-bombing a deer. I wanna feed one of my little sisters to something bigger’n me. It’s gonna be like frickin’ Christmas, and I want you to be there.”
One of the things that identifies Kelly Cruz is the fact that he literally can’t stop talking.
As a child, he’s bubbling over with information, directions, and observations. As a teenager, he’s just full of words to talk about the world.
And one of the telling things about his incredible resilience, is that even after the unthinkable happens to him, the words don’t dry up.
They become angrier for a while, but when he’s hurting, he’s still full of words. And Seth, the dreamy boy he loves, uses those words like a roadmap to help Kelly heal when he’s so full of pain.
Seth has no words—he only has the violin. Kelly’s hurt forces him to communicate using more than music—but then Kelly has always been good at bringing out the best in Seth.
And there’s so much to bring out. Although Seth doesn’t say much, he has a generous soul, and he’s eager to give anything he can to Kelly and his family to make their lives easier. Together, Seth and Kelly, words and emotion, manage to conduct an adult love affair from the age of fifteen and seventeen and they manage to make it stick.
I love exploring this conflict—the conflict between words and feelings—and the way people cope with love when words are not their thing. In Seth and Kelly, I’ve found two characters who manage to forge their own language, of give and take, of “What is best for you?” that to me feels like the best part of two people in love.
Seth Arnold learned at an early age that two things in life could make his soul soar—his violin and Kelly Cruz. In Seth’s uncertain childhood, the kindness of the Cruz family, especially Kelly and his brother, Matty, gave Seth the stability to make his violin sing with the purest sound and opened a world of possibility beyond his home in Sacramento.
Kelly Cruz has loved Seth forever, but he knows Seth’s talents shouldn’t be hidden, not when the world is waiting. Encouraging Seth to follow his music might break Kelly’s heart, but he is determined to see the violin set Seth’s soul free. When their world is devastated by a violent sexual assault and Matty’s prejudices turn him from a brother to an enemy, Seth and Kelly’s future becomes uncertain.
Seth can’t come home and Kelly can’t leave, but they are held together by a love that they clutch with both hands.
Seth and Kelly are young and the world is wide—the only thing they know for certain is they’ll follow their heartstrings to each other’s arms whenever time and fate allow. And pray that one day they can follow that string to forever… before it slices their hearts in two.
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Amy Lane is an auto-buy for me and this book did not disappoint. I read it in one go until the end at 3AM with such a sense of satisfaction. You will laugh and cry at all of her lovable characters and feel all of their emotions. I added it to my “best books of the year” list. Thank you, Amy, for your beautiful stories.
Thank YOU so much for reading!