Everybody thinks Mackey
Sanders’s Outbreak Monkey is the last coming of Rock ’n’ Roll Jesus, but
Cheever Sanders can’t wait to make a name for himself where nobody expects him
to fill his famous brothers’ shoes. He’s tired of living in their shadow.
Blake Manning has been one
of Outbreak Monkey’s lead guitarists for ten years. He got this gig on luck and
love, not talent. So hearing that Cheever is blowing through Outbreak Monkey’s
hard-earned money in an epic stretch of partying pisses him off.
Blake shows up at
Cheever’s nonstop orgy to enforce some rules, but instead of a jaded punk, he
finds a lost boy as talented at painting as Mackey is at song-making, and
terrified to let anybody see the real him. Childhood abuse and a suicide
attempt left Cheever on the edge of survival—a place Blake knows all too well.
Both men have to make
peace with being second banana in the public eye. Can they find the magic of
coming absolute first with each other?
Buy links: Dreamspinner Amazon
Cat gives this one 5
Meows with a 4 Purr heat index...
So first off, I would not
call this a standalone. I highly suggest you read Beneath The Stain First,
since you meet all the characters there, some of the story overlaps a little
and the other characters play such a big part. there is plenty of backstory,
but I do not think it is enough to give you the full gist of the book. That is
my opinion. This is Cheever, Mackey,
Kell, and Jefferson's little spoiled brother's story and more of Blake.
Cheever has lived in his
famous bothers' shadows most of his life. they gave him everything they didn't
have growing up, except the one thing he craved...being with them. Now 21,
broken alone in art school he faces a downward spiral killing himself with
drugs and sex. With Mackey in the hospital after a bad accident, Blake is sent
in to find Cheever and help him. Both men lean on each other then give into an attraction,
but will this break Blake?
All I can say is OMG!!!
This book was fantastic. I read it with tears in my eyes or fanning myself most
of the time. Amy Lane creates the best characters and can tell such a
believable story you feel right there in it and it has so much feels, the
emotion sweeps over you like a tsunami. And heat? Oh Yeah, this book is full of
that too!
So if you like lots of
emotion, dealing with addiction, Age gap, rock stars, family and hot man-sex
this is for you! Highly recommended!
Excerpt…
Shattered
BLAKE MANNING loved playing
with his band, and Outbreak Monkey was on a roll tonight. Blake played second
lead guitar, which meant that in some ways, he was superfluous—but not when he
was onstage, soaked in sweat, singing backup harmonies he’d helped write,
making music with the men he considered his brothers.
Mackey Sanders, the lead
singer, was on fire. His bleached-blond hair teased big around his gamine face,
his eyeliner extending to a mask around his eyes, Mackey looked naughty and
sexy and wicked.
And it didn’t hurt that he
sang like a whiskey-soaked angel.
“So everybody out there
feeling good?” Mackey whooped. The crowd roared, and Mackey turned to his band.
“How about you, Kell—you feelin’ good?”
Kell Sanders, Mackey’s
older brother and first lead guitar, played a rocking riff, preplanned, as his
answer.
Blake played up his guitar
riff and winked at Kell, knowing the big screen would take the bro-flirt for
what it was when Kell winked back. Once upon a time, Blake might have
interpreted that look as hopeful, but Kell had been married for eight years now
and had two kids. Blake’s long-buried crush on his bandmate had since morphed
into what it always should have been—brotherhood.
The venue wasn’t too
big—about ten thousand seats, when they often played twenty-five—but the
stadium was packed.
Behind Blake and Kell,
Jefferson Sanders played bass guitar and Stevie Harris played the drums. And
while the only serious talent in the whole ensemble was Mackey, the rest of
them loved playing so much, worked so hard at it—at new songs, at being better
every time out of the gate—that they’d managed to be on Billboard’s Top Ten
more weeks than not in the last nine years.
It hadn’t come easy, still
didn’t, Blake thought, attuning his body to take the cues from Jefferson and
Stevie as they finished their introductions.
But as Mackey took the
crowd from the introduction into the bridge of “The I’m Sorry Song”—one of
their oldest, most loved hits—Blake felt the adrenaline surge of making music,
and making it well. So much work, so much pain under the bridge, but here, now,
Blake Manning and his brothers-in-band were flying so high, nothing could bring
them down.
It’s all he’d ever wanted
to do with his life. He’d tried it on his own, his solo album, and it had all
but disappeared. But here, with his brothers, being a smaller part of a bigger
whole? He was a rock star in the best kind of way, the kind that took people on
a trip and helped them fly. Not bad for a kid from a trailer park in Lancaster,
right?
He and Kell moved toward
each other on the stage, doing that thing where Kell moved forward while Blake
rocked back, and together they watched as Mackey clambered on top of the giant
speakers on either side of the stage. Mackey was little and spry and hella
fit—they all were, especially since Mackey and Blake had gotten out of rehab
nine years before. The little monster seemed able to do everything. He’d been
making this running-along-the-speakers thing part of the gig this tour, and the
first time he’d done it, he’d scared the shit out of their manager.
Of course, Trav Ford was
Mackey’s husband, married in a quiet ceremony in upstate New York five years
ago, so Trav got to freak out about Mackey as much as he wanted.
Still, they were tight.
All of them. They lived together in a big-ass house with too many rooms. They
ran together, they practiced together, they split off into groups and went on
vacations together. Kell’s wife, Briony, was working their soundboard, and Stevie
and Jefferson’s, uh, wife, Shelia, was back at the hotel room, watching Kell
and Briony’s children as well as hers and the boys’.
In a way, it was
claustrophobic—Blake could see that.
But for the first few
years, it had kept Blake and Mackey clean, because nothing made you as
accountable as family up in your face 24-7. In the last few years, though, it
had been more than that. It had been comfort and protection from a world Blake
had seen the worst of.
For Blake Manning’s first
twenty years, he hadn’t had a soul he could trust, and for the last twelve,
he’d had a family.
He wasn’t going to shit on
that. In fact, he’d die to take care of it.
And like everybody else in
the world, his heart lodged in his throat and tried to choke him when he saw
Mackey Sanders scampering along the top of the giant amplifier.
But when he saw Mackey
fall off, it threatened to stop.
Angst and pain, Amy Lane
Amy Lane has two kids in college, two gradeschoolers in soccer, two cats, and
two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with most of
the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a
penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all
the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this
day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance--and if you
accidentally make eye contact, she'll bore you to tears with why those three
genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are
worth the urge to write.
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great excerpt
ReplyDeleteThank you for the review and excerpt!
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