REVIEWED by Jay V.

TITLE: Wild Card

AUTHOR: Nic Starr

SERIES: The Road To Rocktoberfest #3

PUBLISHER: Self Published

RELEASE DATE: October 23, 2020

BLURB:

Hitting the big time in Australia isn’t enough. Making it overseas, now that’s on a whole other level.

Rafe Moreno, lead singer of HyperOctane, is on the brink of achieving everything he’s set out to do before his thirtieth birthday. Ten years of hard work and focus is finally paying off. Not that he doesn’t enjoy the rock and roll lifestyle–adoration, parties, men. What’s not to like? Including a hot hook-up with his bandmate’s younger brother. But the most important thing is keeping his eye on the prize at any cost.

Parker Shaw is nothing like his outgoing, super-talented rock star brother, so finding himself on a plane heading to the other side of the world to play guitar with HyperOctane is insane. Who in their right mind would want an ordinary, skinny, red-haired analyst to perform with one of the top bands from Australia?

Rafe’s dream is the big time, not a relationship. The furthest thing from Parker’s mind is trusting his broken heart to anyone again. But what happens on the road, stays on the road, right? Rafe and Parker embark on the rock tour of a lifetime, a tour that will bring a lot more than they expected, because love is a wild card, not something you can plan for.

REVIEW:

Sometimes you need a straightforward book to sooth your soul. Rafe is on the edge of becoming internationally known as he and his band are given the opportunity to take the stage at Rocktoberfest in the US. They’re well know in Australia, but their ambitions are bigger. When Parker comes to visit his brother, who is the guitarist in the band, he meets Rafe at a party and everything suddenly changes. With a twist of fate, they are more tied together than their original tryst and they must work through their perspectives on life to really be satisfied in their journey.

The characters that Starr presents are very multifaceted. You get a true sense of the conflicts within each, as they deal with how they see the world, what they want in life, and how they must grow to be satisfied. There are not huge, dramatic conflict in this book, but instead of weakening the book, it makes it stronger as it’s a study in working through your feelings. The two grow to become so good for each other, changing their view of themselves for the better. They are mostly trying to jump over their own self-created hurtles.

As they grow to know each other, being thrown in to an international tour, they begin to see how they fit together, even though neither of them are looking for that kind of situation. Parker is such a sweet guy and genuinely has to work through his anxieties and past history to move forward. Rafe, who could have been an aloof rock star, has a soft, sweet side that can be seen, but Parker isn’t quite the one to do so. They must learn about each other and see where this goes.

If you want a book that is low on dramatic conflict, this is it. Pleasant without being saccharin, the book was a joy to read. Bonus for being about Australians, as you get to ‘hear’ their cute accents and Australian psyche, being much more laid back about life. This is part of a series but you don’t have to have read any of the earlier books. There’s some references to other band situations that are likely in earlier books, but it won’t be a spoiler. In this time in the world, we all need to settle down and read something that is low on major conflict but a study on learning and growing internally.

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