Country music combines with complicated family dynamics in this latest novel from Jennifer Echols (Such a Rush).
Eighteen-year-old narrator Bailey Mayfield is a gifted fiddle player. She and her sister, Julie, used to tour together. Julie sang melody and strummed the guitar, while Bailey sang harmony and played the fiddle. When executives at a record label discover the sisters, they decide they want only Julie. The girls' parents, fearing Bailey will ruin her sister's career, ship her off to live with her grandfather in Nashville while Julie prepares her performances and songs with strict instructions not to do anything that could draw attention to her, lest the public find out the record label ditched one sister in favor of the other.
What her parents don't plan on is Bailey's grandfather finding her a gig playing backup for an Elvis impersonator in a shopping mall. There Bailey meets Sam Hardiman, who wants to take his high school band to the big time and thinks Bailey may be the missing piece. Soon she's playing with them and trying to figure out Sam's motives: Does he like Bailey for who she is, or is he using her to push his band to the top?
Echols once again mines the complex realm of family relationships and romance, against an irresistible Nashville backdrop. Bailey's scorn towards her situation will draw in readers as she begins to discover what she values about herself and what she means to others. --Shanyn Day, blogger at Chick Loves Lit