Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - The Breakup Tour

This book feels like nothing but wasted potential. It’s supposed to be a love letter to Swifties but it comes off as cheap and inauthentic. The lyrics don’t have any nuance which is why I usually stay away from books with musician MCs. Even worse is the writing itself, which is heavy handed and jam packed with forced musical metaphors. The only thing they do well is letting an awkward conversation hang in the air.

Riley is a bad caricature of Taylor Swift and a stupid one too. Girlie pop just walks around a major city with no security? I can suspend my disbelief a little but there’s no universe in which her personal safety would be risked like that. And she’s an enormous star who lets her team tell her they’re using her ex-husband’s obsession with her work as free marketing for them? They work for you, baby girl, not the other way around! If Ms Swift read this, I’m sure she’d be offended.

Even if I ignored all the bothersome industry things, I can’t buy into the couple. Riley and Max have zero chemistry. Everything is based on what they had before but we didn’t get to see that. Their declarations of love ring hollow because they’re not real people. They’re just shells. I get more authentic emotion from the person on TikTok who does the 2am pretending I’m headlining an international stadium tour videos.

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madnabox's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book was inspired by Taylor Swift. It's even dedicated to her. However, if you are a Swiftie, and you want to pick up this book. I caution against it. I'm not going to speculate on whether the authors are fans or not. But this book is like what the media thinks Taylor Swift is: the serial dater who only writes break up songs about her exes. There is even a part in the book where Riley is going to pick up a guy and is writing the song of their break up in her head as she is going through the interaction. Maybe the authors are doing what Taylor Swift did with Blank Space and doing satire of her media image, but if they are I would have liked that to have been said somewhere.

All that aside, taking this book as just a contemporary romance with a second chance romance trope, it was still ok. The language is very lyrical and poetic. Sometimes overly so. The characters are not that likable to me. I wanted them to get together, but at the same time didn't really care. The pining was drawn out longer that it needed to be.

I borrowed the audiobook from the library via Libby. I liked that the dual-POV was read by a female and male narrators. The songs mentioned in the book that Riley writes are at the end. They were fun to read. That was a nice touch added.

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annabananadel's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

“Every song is a love song if you play it with the right person.”

I brought this book to read during The Eras Tour vacation just because it was heavily inspired by Taylor Swift.

Okay. Sadly, it was a bad book. I was so excited to read it knowing that it has the second chance romance trope but what I did not expect is how poorly the story was crafted. The backstory of how they broke up was still a mess for me and was not entirely resolved at the end of the book.

Okay I love the little Taylor Swift references here and there. I love Riley being a strong female character. But sometimes, she is indeed dumb af who craves drama. Max is just….Max (my last paragraph explains it all). The side characters are also weren’t fully utilized. Even the ex-husband. I don’t know, to be honest. I’m just glad this book is out of my way. I thought there would be a redeeming quality at the end but sadly, none. I wish they’d did the song some justice where they include it in the story and not just at the end of the book where you see the whole song. Hire someone to sing it too and post it in Spotify like how Colleen Hoover’s Maybe Someday/Now was able to.

If you broke up with someone to pursue a different path, that’s acceptable. But you got back together and still are on the same path when you left her? Like? Uhm. Why break up in the first place? You just lost a decade together because of that. No wonder she’s scared of getting back together because you traumatized her. It does not really make any sense.

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