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rhodaj 's review for:
Songs in Ursa Major
by Emma Brodie
Thank you to HarperCollins Australia for sending me a copy of this book to review!
This book follows the rise of fame of Jane Quinn and to a lesser degree her band the Breakers in the late 60’s/early 70’s from when they step in at a music festival for local legend Jesse Reid, who was injured in a car accident - and her eventual relationship with him.
Growing up surrounded by music (my father is a musician) and a child of the 70’s and 80’s, I was really looking forward to this book. Unfortunately it didn’t really hit the mark for me, so if you loved this one, you may want to look away now!
For me, a great book has either a compelling story or brilliant characters and if it has both, so much the better! In my opinion, this book had neither. The storyline is ok, but nothing memorable and the “big secrets” are hardly that. The characters I found very flat and apart from Jane and Jesse, I felt that the rest of the characters could have been interchangeable, as there was very little to differentiate one from another. There was more written about Jane and Jesse, but I never felt that I had a clear picture of who they were as there is a lot of telling in this book, as opposed to showing.
I didn’t get any 70’s vibes at all from this book, which was disappointing but there was some interesting information about song and music composition, as well as rather fascinating sections on the machinations of record labels and how they worked and how ruthless the industry could be.
Overall, I would say this is an ok read, but if this is indeed loosely based on Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, I’m offended on their behalf that they seem to be such dull people as portrayed in this book
This book follows the rise of fame of Jane Quinn and to a lesser degree her band the Breakers in the late 60’s/early 70’s from when they step in at a music festival for local legend Jesse Reid, who was injured in a car accident - and her eventual relationship with him.
Growing up surrounded by music (my father is a musician) and a child of the 70’s and 80’s, I was really looking forward to this book. Unfortunately it didn’t really hit the mark for me, so if you loved this one, you may want to look away now!
For me, a great book has either a compelling story or brilliant characters and if it has both, so much the better! In my opinion, this book had neither. The storyline is ok, but nothing memorable and the “big secrets” are hardly that. The characters I found very flat and apart from Jane and Jesse, I felt that the rest of the characters could have been interchangeable, as there was very little to differentiate one from another. There was more written about Jane and Jesse, but I never felt that I had a clear picture of who they were as there is a lot of telling in this book, as opposed to showing.
I didn’t get any 70’s vibes at all from this book, which was disappointing but there was some interesting information about song and music composition, as well as rather fascinating sections on the machinations of record labels and how they worked and how ruthless the industry could be.
Overall, I would say this is an ok read, but if this is indeed loosely based on Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, I’m offended on their behalf that they seem to be such dull people as portrayed in this book