REVIEWED by Jay V.
TITLE: The B-Side
AUTHOR: B. Harmony
SERIES: Perspective #1
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 287 pages
RELEASE DATE: August 28, 2020
BLURB:
Chance
When I read the roommate wanted ad, I thought my sister was encouraging me to live with an insane person. As it turns out, he isn’t insane, he’s sexy and one hundred percent my type. Living with him will be the ultimate test of my self control.
When the combination of our love of music and my overwhelming need to take care of him meets jealousy, sparks fly. His heart may be damaged, but nothing is beyond repair.
Now all I have to do is convince him that I’m in this for the long haul, not just this moment.
Tyler
I may look like the happy-go-lucky gay guy with a big smile and more punny tees than one person should probably own. But it’s just a shield to protect my heart, the one that has been torn apart by the people who were meant to love me most. The last thing I’m willing to do is risk the tattered shreds on my new—straight—roommate. Sure, he’s sexy as sin and has a love of music that rivals my own, but all that is just grounds for a new friendship. Nothing more. Right?
Yet, every moment we spend together tests a little bit more of my self control. When it turns out my roommate is not as straight as I once thought, I have to decide if this is one playlist I should listen to.
Will we have our own love song, or will this just be another broken-hearted ballad?
REVIEW:
Chance needs a roommate and his sister thinks she’s found a good fit. Tyler is tired of living alone and feels like he needs people to fill his house. It seems like a match made in heaven, but will it? Are they compatible? Are they even interested in each other beyond sharing a house?
There are some funny aspects to the two main leads with a nice push-pull on them getting to know each other. The two characters are pretty fleshed out with all their good and bad aspects. The question if either are interested in each other plays out well. When they do finally realize there might be something more, they begin to grow together. It was a pleasant and interesting novel until I got to this point. I thought – this is going way too well, and then, of course, a pretty predictable incident happens that tests the two men and their relationship.
This is B. Harmony’s debut novel. It’s a good start and she will be a wonderful new addition on the writing scene, but this book is a bit of a cookie-cutter format in it’s overall story arc. I know that we read MM for many reasons and much of the time we like the more light stories that are like a familiar blanket, but this one felt slightly forced. The involvement of music was somewhat flimsy at times with very flowery musical language used at arbitrary parts of the book. I feel it could have used the language of music more effective had it been used consistently, but sparingly, throughout the entire book. The B-Side analogy, when we finally get to it, is a really sweet concept but it almost feels like it comes out of left field in the sense that the music part of the two doesn’t play up as being that important to be using such language in just the right time. I think there’s a lot of potential in Harmony’s writing, I just wish it was a bit more adventurous in where it took the story.
RATING:
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