Rock Fiction Coveting: Rock the Heart by Michelle Valentine

So as I was looking for better links to Gracen Miller’s Rockin’ the Heart for last week’s post, I came across a book that’s been on my radar for awhile now, but I’ve never blogged about. So… while I’m coveting Rock Fiction every Thursday, here’s another one to publicly drool over.

It’s Michelle Valentine, who has written an entire Rock Fiction series. The first is called Rock the Heart, and it has a twist that’s both familiar and fresh.

How can that be?

Easy. The familiar is that the character comes together because of a business arrangement between the bands. Here, the rock god has hired the marketing company the heroine works for. What’s fresh is that it’s a marketing company, and they send an intern out to seal the deal.

Now, this brings up immediate questions. Does this marketing company have music industry experience? If so, why doesn’t Lane know this? And why send an intern to do an executive’s job? Personally, I’d be offended, whether or not I already knew the person involved.

These two have a lot to overcome, our intern and our rock god. Notice how they aren’t even on equal footing? They’ve got this past history and, of course, Noel is into the groupie scene.

How author Valentine can pull it off… that’s the question, as it always is. Any book can have holes poked into it when you’re only going on the description. What matters, as always, is if the characters can transcend the cliche, if the music biz details are accurate, and how well the book captures the reader’s imagination and comes alive in our minds.

The pursuit of the books that do that make the occasional clunker worthwhile. I’ve seen more than one book rise above familiar tropes and be standouts. Here’s hoping this series does exactly that.