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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
i love it. The flow of the story is good. I love the relationship between them all. Their friendship is something enviable and touching. I fell in love with the characters. I love Liana is so keenly aware of her mental health
I love tashie’s writing so so much. Her books make me feel so many things and this one had such incredible mental health rep.
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book has everything I love, on paper: found family, a sweet and kind love interest, a slow-burn romance…! Unfortunately, though, the execution was reeeally lacking, in my opinion. I found this book profoundly boring, and I don't think the main premise (aka, the romance) was properly built up.
The book starts off with the MC (Liana) flirting with na aspiring musician (Thomas) for weeks. She ends up showing her dad (who's a famous music producer) Thomas's demo, which her dad loves. She then finds out that not only was Thomas using her to further his career, but "his" songs were actually stolen from someone else. Liana REFUSES to tell her dad that Thomas is a phony, because her dad is neglectful, and the first time he paid attention to her in years was when she found the ~incredible musician~ that is Thomas. Liana's plan, then, is to let her dad keep believing Thomas is amazing, while also helping the people Thomas stole music from (a band called Third Eye), who she also doesn't tell the truth to (because she literally has the power to expose Thomas as a thief, but refuses to do so lol). So, yeah, her ridiculous plan is to make Third Eye more famous, in hopes that her dad likes them more than Thomas, all while not revealing that Thomas doesn't write his own music. It's suuuuch a stupid plan. 🙄
This was the main conflict of the book, and it was incredibly frustrating. First of all, it's very predictable; you can quickly tell Thomas is using Liana to reach her dad, and when his plan is revealed, it becomes obvious that the 3rd act conflict is going to be Third Eye finding out that she had the power to expose Thomas's deception, but didn't.
Liana is aware that her lies won't end well, and she gets called out on page for it, but it's still annoying to see this stupid conflict drag on until the last 15% of the book. You know from the *very start* of the story how things will play out, so the whole book is just buildup to something that you know exactly how it's gonna end. It was sooooo repetitive, and the payoff wasn't even satisfying.Liana just throws herself a pity party, wondering “What was I supposed to do?” (uhhhh maybe tell your dad that Thomas stole other people’s music? It's not YOUR fault that HE lied to you!). Third Eye aren't even mad at her for not exposing Thomas for stealing their songs (even though that's what they should be mad about); they're only angry that she lied to them (about who she is and her reasons to want to help them). And they literally get over it immediately lol. 🙄🙄🙄 All that buildup for like 2 pages of anger from the victims of Thomas's theft + Liana's refusal to expose Thomas's theft. Such a stupid conflict for the whole book to be centered around.
Let's now talk about the romance. I didn't care about it AT ALL. 🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥 The LI is one of the members of Third Eye, Sky Moon (yes, that is his actual name. I wish I was joking 🥴🥴🥴). As Liana helps Third Eye become more famous (her ~genius~ plan, remember?) she bonds with the members of the band. However, I feel like she bonded much more with the other members than with Sky Moon. The platonic relationships she had with the other boys felt more developed and real than the romance with Sky, which was really lackluster in comparison.
Liana and Sky barely even talk. It was over halfway through the book that they started ~kind of~ bonding. And, listen: I LOVE slow-burns! That is literally the only way I can enjoy a romance! But if I don't actually SEE the characters getting closer, then the romance won't be enjoyable! Like, yes, Liana and Sky only get together at the end, but also, they barely interact throughout the whole book, so it doesn't even feel like a slow-burn; it just feels like an underdeveloped romance that only started being (poorly) developed in the last half of the book. 😕😕😕 I appreciate a slow-burn, but that doesn’t mean there should be NO relationship development in the 1st half of the book.
Liana often mentions that Sky is really hot and really nice/protective of his band mates. She knows him sooooo well, despite barely talking to him. They then realize they both have dead mothers, and that's about it. I don't really understand why either of them liked the other. 😐 There was no reason for them to be in love. There was barely even a reason for them to be friends, especially when you compare their friendship to Liana's with the other band boys, which were actually kind of developed. The romance just gave me NOTHING.
I also didn't find Sky to be that compelling of a LI. Once again, I LOVE him on paper: sweet, kind, understanding… Literally all I want in a male LI! However, Sky’s whole personality is being a martyr — being too nice, doing everything he could for his band mates, not accepting their help, thinking he should suffer so the other boys could thrive… 🙄 Other than that, all I know was that he writes music and has a dead mum. He was booooriiiinggggg. 🥱 Maybe it's because we never saw much of him (since he and Liana didn't talk much outside of the topics I already mentioned). Idk. I just didn't care about him, and I cared even less about his and Liana's romance.
This book also has a problem with telling instead of showing :
➤ Liana's relationship with Thomas (I wish we'd seen a bit more of their fling, because it lasted a while and it didn't feel like it).
➤ Liana going to her internship (she goes twice a week for months, but we only see her there like, once).
➤ She does a presentation for a bunch of importante people at the music label her dad works at, and her dad is finally paying attention to her, and yet we never see this happen.
➤ Lots of moments between her and the band are just mentioned instead of shown, which sucks, because their friendship is supposedly a big point of the story. The author reeeeally wants the reader to believe they're a ~found family~, and the characters are always saying they're "family", but it never felt that deep, to me. 😐
➤ As I already mentioned, Liana knows Sky super well even though they barely interact on page. I guess their relationship developed off-page.
➤ She and Sky go on a late night drive once, and a while later it's just mentioned that they actually kept doing that and it had become a ritual of theirs. We, the readers, didn't even know they kept doing it that often lol.
➤ Liana randomly mentions she found out a while back that some of the band members are bi. Off-page, of course.
➤ Liana worked as a social media manager for the band, and it's mentioned that she doubled their followers on instagram, got them a lot of YT subs, got their twitter hashtag to be used regularly, and managed to get one of their shows to be packed (we never even knew they were doing shows, btw. This comes out of nowhere and is never brought up again).
All of these things happened off-page, and were only mentioned in the story a while after they happened. I don't know why the author didn't just show at least some of these moments, especially the ones that would help solidify the relationships.
Another thing: I get that this book was about music, but there were waaaayy too many music references. Each chapter was titled after a song, but if you didn't know that specific song, it would literally mean nothing to you. I think this would've worked better if the author used a line from said song at the start of the chapter, like an opening quote (something that a lot of other books do as well). That way, we could actually understand the importance of each song for each chapter.
There were also MULTIPLE playlists in the middle of the book. Like, the author straight up just dropped a list of 10-15 songs in the middle of the book – this happened at least 7 times, which is 6 times too many for a full playlist drop. That, in addition to the 60+ songs mentioned at the start of the 60+ chapters + all the other songs mentioned casually throughout the book, made this kind of annoying to read. If you actually wanted to fully understand the book, you'd literally have to spend hours (maybe days) going through all the songs mentioned here. It was super unnecessary, and would've been exhausting to keep up with (obviously, I didn't even try lol. Ain't nobody got time for that).
What I liked: Liana's personal issues (grieving her mother's death and dealing with her father's neglect) and the focus on mental health and therapy. I also liked the representation. Overall, not na offensive book by any means; just a boring waste of potential.
The book starts off with the MC (Liana) flirting with na aspiring musician (Thomas) for weeks. She ends up showing her dad (who's a famous music producer) Thomas's demo, which her dad loves. She then finds out that not only was Thomas using her to further his career, but "his" songs were actually stolen from someone else. Liana REFUSES to tell her dad that Thomas is a phony, because her dad is neglectful, and the first time he paid attention to her in years was when she found the ~incredible musician~ that is Thomas. Liana's plan, then, is to let her dad keep believing Thomas is amazing, while also helping the people Thomas stole music from (a band called Third Eye), who she also doesn't tell the truth to (because she literally has the power to expose Thomas as a thief, but refuses to do so lol). So, yeah, her ridiculous plan is to make Third Eye more famous, in hopes that her dad likes them more than Thomas, all while not revealing that Thomas doesn't write his own music. It's suuuuch a stupid plan. 🙄
This was the main conflict of the book, and it was incredibly frustrating. First of all, it's very predictable; you can quickly tell Thomas is using Liana to reach her dad, and when his plan is revealed, it becomes obvious that the 3rd act conflict is going to be Third Eye finding out that she had the power to expose Thomas's deception, but didn't.
Liana is aware that her lies won't end well, and she gets called out on page for it, but it's still annoying to see this stupid conflict drag on until the last 15% of the book. You know from the *very start* of the story how things will play out, so the whole book is just buildup to something that you know exactly how it's gonna end. It was sooooo repetitive, and the payoff wasn't even satisfying.
Let's now talk about the romance. I didn't care about it AT ALL. 🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥 The LI is one of the members of Third Eye, Sky Moon (yes, that is his actual name. I wish I was joking 🥴🥴🥴). As Liana helps Third Eye become more famous (her ~genius~ plan, remember?) she bonds with the members of the band. However, I feel like she bonded much more with the other members than with Sky Moon. The platonic relationships she had with the other boys felt more developed and real than the romance with Sky, which was really lackluster in comparison.
Liana and Sky barely even talk. It was over halfway through the book that they started ~kind of~ bonding. And, listen: I LOVE slow-burns! That is literally the only way I can enjoy a romance! But if I don't actually SEE the characters getting closer, then the romance won't be enjoyable! Like, yes, Liana and Sky only get together at the end, but also, they barely interact throughout the whole book, so it doesn't even feel like a slow-burn; it just feels like an underdeveloped romance that only started being (poorly) developed in the last half of the book. 😕😕😕 I appreciate a slow-burn, but that doesn’t mean there should be NO relationship development in the 1st half of the book.
Liana often mentions that Sky is really hot and really nice/protective of his band mates. She knows him sooooo well, despite barely talking to him. They then realize they both have dead mothers, and that's about it. I don't really understand why either of them liked the other. 😐 There was no reason for them to be in love. There was barely even a reason for them to be friends, especially when you compare their friendship to Liana's with the other band boys, which were actually kind of developed. The romance just gave me NOTHING.
I also didn't find Sky to be that compelling of a LI. Once again, I LOVE him on paper: sweet, kind, understanding… Literally all I want in a male LI! However, Sky’s whole personality is being a martyr — being too nice, doing everything he could for his band mates, not accepting their help, thinking he should suffer so the other boys could thrive… 🙄 Other than that, all I know was that he writes music and has a dead mum. He was booooriiiinggggg. 🥱 Maybe it's because we never saw much of him (since he and Liana didn't talk much outside of the topics I already mentioned). Idk. I just didn't care about him, and I cared even less about his and Liana's romance.
This book also has a problem with telling instead of showing :
➤ Liana's relationship with Thomas (I wish we'd seen a bit more of their fling, because it lasted a while and it didn't feel like it).
➤ Liana going to her internship (she goes twice a week for months, but we only see her there like, once).
➤ She does a presentation for a bunch of importante people at the music label her dad works at, and her dad is finally paying attention to her, and yet we never see this happen.
➤ Lots of moments between her and the band are just mentioned instead of shown, which sucks, because their friendship is supposedly a big point of the story. The author reeeeally wants the reader to believe they're a ~found family~, and the characters are always saying they're "family", but it never felt that deep, to me. 😐
➤ As I already mentioned, Liana knows Sky super well even though they barely interact on page. I guess their relationship developed off-page.
➤ She and Sky go on a late night drive once, and a while later it's just mentioned that they actually kept doing that and it had become a ritual of theirs. We, the readers, didn't even know they kept doing it that often lol.
➤ Liana randomly mentions she found out a while back that some of the band members are bi. Off-page, of course.
➤ Liana worked as a social media manager for the band, and it's mentioned that she doubled their followers on instagram, got them a lot of YT subs, got their twitter hashtag to be used regularly, and managed to get one of their shows to be packed (we never even knew they were doing shows, btw. This comes out of nowhere and is never brought up again).
All of these things happened off-page, and were only mentioned in the story a while after they happened. I don't know why the author didn't just show at least some of these moments, especially the ones that would help solidify the relationships.
Another thing: I get that this book was about music, but there were waaaayy too many music references. Each chapter was titled after a song, but if you didn't know that specific song, it would literally mean nothing to you. I think this would've worked better if the author used a line from said song at the start of the chapter, like an opening quote (something that a lot of other books do as well). That way, we could actually understand the importance of each song for each chapter.
There were also MULTIPLE playlists in the middle of the book. Like, the author straight up just dropped a list of 10-15 songs in the middle of the book – this happened at least 7 times, which is 6 times too many for a full playlist drop. That, in addition to the 60+ songs mentioned at the start of the 60+ chapters + all the other songs mentioned casually throughout the book, made this kind of annoying to read. If you actually wanted to fully understand the book, you'd literally have to spend hours (maybe days) going through all the songs mentioned here. It was super unnecessary, and would've been exhausting to keep up with (obviously, I didn't even try lol. Ain't nobody got time for that).
What I liked: Liana's personal issues (grieving her mother's death and dealing with her father's neglect) and the focus on mental health and therapy. I also liked the representation. Overall, not na offensive book by any means; just a boring waste of potential.
this is the cutest YA romance i’ve read in a long time! the romance was adorable, but i also loved it for the friendships, music, & representation. i am a sucker for the found family trope, and this book DELIVERS. i got so many great song recs, as each chapter has a song at the beginning & there are playlists throughout the book (and lots of taylor swift, which is always a plus for me!). i also liked that not everything was wrapped up neatly in a bow at the end; liana still has struggles that she is dealing with, which made her character more relatable to me. i can’t think of anything i didn’t like. this is my first time reading a tashie book, and i’ll definitely be going back to read more! ❤️
Wow I love this book so much! Thank you Tashie for putting this story out into the world! I strongly connected with Lianna through her love for music and experience of loss/grief. Music is such an important part of my life in getting me through any type of situation, portraying the emotions I feel in a way far better than I ever could, and creating and supporting friendships I’ve made throughout my life. It was so comforting to read a story about characters who feel the same way. I’ve read all of Tashie’s books and have loved and devoured each one, but Stay with my Heart is by far my favorite! It was super fun to listen to the songs that go with each chapter (there’s a Spotify playlist
5.0
I love Third Eye my gay ass boy band!!!! So gay they rope around to having extreme boy band bromance and they're actually not very gay (except for two of them). No but for real Tashie Bhuiyan perfectly captures a boy band before they get famous, real and raw and with a love for music. Oh to be a boy band manager…sigh. I was just saying that this is what watching JATP felt like and they threw me a JATP song in ch. 57. Chef’s kiss. This book was like a sloppy wet kiss to the forehead I love it so much.
I love Third Eye my gay ass boy band!!!! So gay they rope around to having extreme boy band bromance and they're actually not very gay (except for two of them). No but for real Tashie Bhuiyan perfectly captures a boy band before they get famous, real and raw and with a love for music. Oh to be a boy band manager…sigh. I was just saying that this is what watching JATP felt like and they threw me a JATP song in ch. 57. Chef’s kiss. This book was like a sloppy wet kiss to the forehead I love it so much.
this is truly the first book I’ve read where I feel like the playlists listed through chapters and songs listed at the beginning of chapters actually add to the plot and I loved them. such good music taste!! 4.5 stars
“I could write a million songs about you, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
I liked that there was a song on every chapter. Sky is a fucking Swiftie, what? I will forever love the way Tashie writes books. It’s always a ‘never put down book’ for me. I was in tears basically the last 50 pages of this book, and adding ‘Levanter’ by Stray Kids didn’t help. Tashie always writes ‘found family’ tropes the best. Fuck Thomas and fuck her dad. I wish there was some resolution between Liana and her dad, but I understand why there wasn’t. I can’t wait until Tashie puts out another book. I loved them all. I said before I even started this book that it would be a 5 star read and I was correct.
I liked that there was a song on every chapter. Sky is a fucking Swiftie, what? I will forever love the way Tashie writes books. It’s always a ‘never put down book’ for me. I was in tears basically the last 50 pages of this book, and adding ‘Levanter’ by Stray Kids didn’t help. Tashie always writes ‘found family’ tropes the best. Fuck Thomas and fuck her dad. I wish there was some resolution between Liana and her dad, but I understand why there wasn’t. I can’t wait until Tashie puts out another book. I loved them all. I said before I even started this book that it would be a 5 star read and I was correct.
NMIXX MENTIONNED!!
But really this book makes me want to fall in love and make music❤️
But really this book makes me want to fall in love and make music❤️
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated