August Lane
2025
I picked this up after a New York Times reviewer half-joked that she resented her own readers for reading her column instead of picking up this book, which felt like about as strong an endorsement as you can get. I wanted to love it and expected to, but I only made it about halfway through. The dual timeline, which I usually enjoy, felt hard to follow here, and the podcast/interview interludes on top of it were one narrative device too many. I also couldn’t buy into the central romance: August forgives Luke for a major betrayal too quickly and too easily, and the book seemed more interested in convincing me he’s a great guy than in showing me why through his actions, before or after the betrayal. I never got a sense of how or when they actually fell in love. I was far more drawn to the glimpses of their childhoods and to Jojo’s story, but those threads got too little airtime before the book jumped to something else entirely. I’d also hoped for more of the Black country music thread the marketing promised, and it just wasn’t there enough for me. Not one I’d recommend or revisit.
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