Lead - Review

Lead (Stage Dive, # 3)

By: Kylie Scott

Published: July 29th 2014 by St. Martin's Griffin

288 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source:

( Goodreads | Book Depository )

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Goodreads description--The lead singer of Stage Dive, Jimmy is used to getting whatever he wants, whenever he wants it whether it's booze or women. However, when a PR disaster serves as a wake-up call about his life and lands him in rehab, he finds himself stuck with a new assistant hired by the record company to keep him out of trouble. He doesn't need or want a babysitter. Especially one that looks like Lena.

Lena's not willing to take any shit from the sexy rocker she's been hired to assist and is determined to keep their relationship completely professional, despite the sizzling chemistry that sparks between them every time they're in the same room. But when Jimmy pushes her too far and Lena leaves, he realizes that he may just have lost the best thing to ever happen to him. Readers won't want to miss the third book in this New Adult series about ordinary young women who fall in love with rock stars.

I’ve enjoyed the Stage Dive series so far. Yet I was expecting for Jimmy’s story to be my favorite so far due to his troubled background. We know that Jimmy has a history with addiction—drugs and alcohol. He’s done multiple stints in rehab, and keeping him sober is essential to keeping the band alive. He hasn’t taken to any of the assistants or sober companions that he’s been assigned in the past, but maybe just maybe Lena will be different. Lena has an almost instant physical attraction to Jimmy. And overtime she feels as if Jimmy is misunderstood. His good qualities aren’t always seen by others. But as with most people in Jimmy’s shoes, the worst part is that he doesn’t see his good qualities either.

Lena and Jimmy have a relationship that’s semi-antagonistic. It’s not so much that they set out to argue and banter back and forth so much as Jimmy is just really hard to deal with. I liked that their relationship really took a lot of effort and they didn’t just jump into anything, even after Lena threatens to leave. I appreciated her thought process there. She knows she has feelings for Jimmy and her personal feelings can and likely will influence their professional relationship and so she needs to do what’s best for her and remove herself from a situation where it seems like she can only lose. Yet it didn’t take too terribly much to persuade her to stay.

Most of the book was free from any graphic situations. Although, language was definitely present and heavy. The graphic scenes picked up about the 70% mark and were fairly frequent throughout the rest of the book.

As the book progressed, I wasn’t seeing the progress in Jimmy and Lena’s relationship that I was expecting. He still fought it and her up until the bitter end. I found the ending to be way too quick and pretty. *highlight for spoiler* Jimmy tells Lena that he can’t love her, that he doesn’t know how. But then he proceeds to tell her how he does feel about her. Lena in turn tells him that’s exactly what love is, and Jimmy’s basically “oh well then I guess I do love you.” I just didn’t buy it. I think it would have been more fitting for Lena to accept within herself that the way Jimmy describes his feelings for her as being love but realizes that convincing him of that will take longer than the work of a few sentences and decided to fight that battle another day confident that he does actually feel the way he says. *end spoiler* I don’t think you have to have a cookie cutter ending for it to still be a happy one.

Another small complaint was that I found at least two grammatical errors/typos. This was in the completed edition that I actually bought for my kindle and not an advanced reader copy. One is too many, but sometimes happens, two is just not cool for a traditionally published book. I really don’t blame this on the author at this point. It’s more of an editor issue. But an annoyance nonetheless.

And as usual, Lead provided the set up for Deep (Ben & Lizzy’s sotry). I have to say that I’m not sure how I feel about what direction that seemed to be heading based off the clues dropped. We shall see.

Lead was a book that I read quickly. I had been looking forward to Jimmy’s story because of his troubled past, but I didn’t love how cookie cutter and rushed the very end happened to be. You can have a happily ever after without it being a “perfect” ending. As a matter of fact, too much perfection leads to unbelievability. I liked that Jimmy and Lena didn’t have a physical relationship for a large part of the book, but when they did things got graphic and combined with the language wasn’t my personal preference, but you come to expect that with this genre as well. Lead gets 3 Stars. Have you read Lead? What did you think? Let me know!