Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Snowmageddon
SERIES: Broadway or Bust
AUTHOR: Tere Michaels
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 154 pages
RELEASE DATE: November 30, 2021
BLURB:
Come the New Year, Luca Vocci is reluctantly headed to LA to start a new life he isn’t sure he wants, far away from his beloved New York City and the lights of Broadway. Until then, he’s directionless, without his spark or any idea what to do next—so, with the holiday season upon him, Luca agrees to do a favor for an old friend and his high-school theater class.
Everything goes according to plan until a snowstorm traps Luca in a house with six rather dramatic teenagers, two chaperones with relationship problems, and three unexpected guests. For Luca, the house is full of memories—and now, music. Maybe the spark he’s looking for is hiding in plain sight.
REVIEW:
Luca Vocci is a former Broadway star turned director who is done dealing with the fallout of the pandemic and the darkness of his beloved theater district. After Christmas, he’s on to hopefully greener pastures in LA at the behest of his friend Teddy. He’s been performing and involved in theater since he was 6 and now that he’s pushing 50, he’s not sure what comes next. He blew out his knee so his dancing days are over. He transitioned to directing a the behest of his surrogate family, the Broadway producing legends, Nev and Bitty Cohen. But now after another divorce and dealing with the closure of theaters for over a year, he’s at loose ends so he’s decided to try something new.
When Luca gets a call from Nate, an actor he has worked with before and who is now teaching at a hoity-toity private school, he agrees to let him bring his theater students to visit the Cohen’s archives in their home in the city that is now Luca’s. The kids arrive and Luca shows them the archives along with June, the caretaker of the house. Soon after as they are working on their assignment though, the weather worsens and there is a knock at the door. Two men show up to take two of the girls to their house in advance of the roads closing. But it appears that the blizzard has worsened and no one is going anywhere. This leads to a “let’s put on a show” scenario 🙂 and an unexpected sleepover.
As the kids are looking through the Cohen archives of memorabilia, show ephemera, etc., one of the students comes upon an unproduced show. And they decide to see what would happen if they maybe workshopped it a little. The results are more than anything Luca envisioned and maybe, just maybe, he’s getting his mojo back. Bitty Cohen may also have more up her sleeve than is first apparent 😉
Full disclosure: This is a wonderful story – but there is no romance in it. This seems to be the setup for a longer series that hopefully will include a romance for Luca, our protagonist. We do however, get to revisit one of our favorite couples of all time. Also, spoiler alert! This book gets an extra quarter star because it features one of my all-time favorite characters, Matt Haight! Evan Cerelli and Matt Haight of the author’s Faith, Love & Devotion series along with some of the next generation make an appearance here 😀 I absolutely loved this whole story – the kids, the chaperones, Luca, June, Bitty, the whole case and crew are so well written. You can tell the author loves Musicals and Broadway and theater kids 🙂 I think we used to call them theater geeks when I was in school – in the dark ages. There are so many wonderful references here. The kids are really authentic here – dramatic, sarcastic, etc. I loved getting to know about them and I hope we might see some of them in future installments. Luca is our main focus and I really liked the way the author dropped in his backstory and how he got to the point that he’s ready to throw in the towel and move. We get his motivation and then we get to see his spark rekindled. Beautifully done 😀
If you love Broadway, musicals, stories of figure out what your 2nd/3rd act is going to be, then you will absolutely love this. If those aren’t your thing, you will be amused by Matt and Evan’s reaction to same. High recommended! Can’t wait for the next story to see what happens to Luca next.
RATING: 
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