1.5 star--Loud is How I Love You (Hub City #1) by Mercy Brown

I love rocker romances. But Loud Is How I Love You was a struggle for me. Which is incredibly surprising after seeing the hardcore fangirling over this one (including from a well known author). I'm not sure how that's happening, really. The gist of it is that two band members have had sex. And the heroine, Emmy, pretty much freaks out over it. And continues to freak out over it and in her panic to not ruin the band dynamics because of it she pretty much does just that. Rinse and repeat. Ad nauseam.

Alright so the good things


I liked the hero and the other band members. Travis is a good guy who is very much in love with the heroine. He's solid, rational, sweet and so damn patient. And the other two guys in the band weren't bad either. They don't have a lot of face time but they were a nice little addition.

And that was pretty much all I liked about this one.

Now. For what didn't work.

The heroine is a trial. Emmy tries too hard and is incredibly annoying, immature, irrational and just obnoxious which is difficult since the entire book is told from her narration. And she does LOVE to hear herself think. She's in her head way too much and, unfortunately, dragged us with her. She over thinks everything, has mercurial moods and is just too young feeling. I had no faith in her. No sympathy for her when she mucks things up. I never rooted for her. Or really cared anything about her other than her hurting the hero over and over and OVER again with her lightning fast changes of resisting a relationship because they could hurt the band then deciding that no they could do thi...nope back to it'll destroy the band! She'd give him a little taste of what he wanted (a relationship) then freaking out and pulling it away. Then would act upset when he was upset or frustrated over her treatment. She was way too obsessive about the band at the risk of everything else. She couldn't see that she was destroying the band on her own in her attempts to not destroy the band. It was just too much and exhausting.

My biggest issue, though, was that it all suffers from a major case of telling and not showing. The book felt like a journal entry. Or a time log. On Monday we did this. On Tuesday we went here. On Wednesday he came over. That night we went to this club. 5 weeks later we dah dah dah. There was just too much time in the heroines head as she rehashed previous encounters, as well. Their first time having sex was picked apart three separate times during the book as she fantasized and fretted over it but it never actually happened on page. Instead of seeing them have a conversation we'd get her thinking about it the next day. There was just so much of her THINKING about what had happened vs actually happening.

The other aspect that was difficult was the musical side. It was obvious the author knows this scene and knows it well. It's detailed and all aspects of the band and the things they're doing are well documented. But it was too much and instead of enhancing the story and romance it took away from it. It's probably great if you're IN the indy band scene. But it doesn't lend itself well to the telling of a romance. It would be like me doing a book about a heroine who was in animal rescue and taking a cat to get vaccines. And then describing every little detail. That certain vaccines are given in certain locations in case of reactions. And it's frowned upon to do them between the shoulder blades because if it does happen to cause cancer there's little you can do treatment-wise vs if they develop a cancerous spot on a leg injection site. In that case you can remove the leg and do chemo and radiation. Which really isn't a big deal in cats. They handle it differently than humans and don't lose their hair or get sick from it. It's very rare they have a reaction but best to be safe especially with the number of vaccines a cat will need initially. Including rabies vaccine at four months old which will need to be boostered a year later.

Get my point? It was just TOO much. Instead of pushing the romance and story forward the incredible detail bogged everything down and became incredibly boring as they traveled to gigs, preformed, watched other bands preform, mentioned all of the other band's members and relationships and if they were likely to get record deals, etc.

All in all, Loud Is How I Love You was a bust for me. Instead of being swept up and captivated by their world it was just words on paper that never managed to inspire me. It's definitely working for others though so if it's one that has you curious maybe check it out. I'd suggest trying a sample of it prior to purchase though.

Twenty-one-year-old front girl Emmylou knows that getting her band noticed in the ‘90s indie rock scene will be no easy task. She definitely knows better than to break the number one rule of the band: Don't sleep with your bandmates! But after she ends up having the best sex of her life with her guitarist, Travis, she finds following that rule is a lot harder than it sounds.

When the band gets the gig of their dreams, making it big seems just within reach. But Emmy’s inability to keep her hands off Travis threatens everything they’ve worked for. Can Emmy find a way to break the rules and not blow the chance of a lifetime?