GHOST NOTE (Gods of Rock #3) by VICKI JAMES

“Do you want to know the best thing about falling in love with a rock star? There are no rules. Nothing is impossible.”

Maybe not impossible, but there are a lot of hurdles and hurts to overcome when your first love and the love of your life chooses a life of music and a legion of adoring fans over you or is sometimes the pain of heartbreak a shield that prevents us from seeing the truth?

Vicki James has delivered a sweet, and at times passionate second chance, small-town romance, in a story about believing in yourself; about taking chances. You only get one chance at life, and she reminds us to get out there and grab life by the balls! Another winner in a series we can’t get enough of!

Daisy Piper and Danny Silver were young lovers who lived and breathed their love, until Danny felt the passion and the need to take a chance on a music career, wanting to explore more than their small town Hope Cove has to offer. Daisy is the opposite; she loves her life and is heartbroken when Danny chooses his music over her.

“You were so loved, and you still left. I don’t think I’ll ever understand that.”
“Daisy, all the love in the world from everyone else couldn’t help me to love myself. That wasn’t going to happen until I went out there and did what I was most afraid to do.”

Fast forward five years and the now twenty-five-year-old Daisy is still trying to move on from the heartbreak of losing Danny, cutting herself off from music entirely so as not to hear how Danny’s career has taken off as lead guitarist with the hugely popular Front Row Frogs – music and lyrics are like a knife to her already bruised heart, music, the beast who stole her love.

‘Danny was everyone else’s now. He belonged to the world and all the screaming fans within it. I belonged here, in this shop…in Hope Cove…’

What Daisy didn’t account for was Danny Silver waltzing back into Hope Cove eliciting all those old emotions Daisy had hoped she’d tramped down, and we witness the passionate and piercing love Danny and Daisy lived through Daisy’s memories and thoughts, allowing us to experience the moments leading up to the decimation of Daisy’s heart. We also gain an insight into Danny and understand more about his decisions and actions

‘Every moment with him burned, and despite me wanting to hate it, I was starting to crave the pain all over again.’

We really enjoyed Ghost Note, though felt a little disappointed to have not experienced the same heart-thumping and intense ‘rock star’ feel we loved so much in the first two books. For us, this theme is all about the music and concert experience, and Ghost Note lacked a little in that area, leaning more towards a small town, second chance romance than the rock star romance we had hugely anticipated. Whilst there were one or two scenes that nearly took us there, they didn’t reach the levels experienced in previous books.

In saying that, the climax of the story had us on our feet and cheering! The musical references had us heading to our music libraries, drawing on our own memories which only music can do so well. We had Aztec Camera on repeat!!!  A fabulous series we hope Vicki James continues to explore!

‘Maybe sometimes you can love a person too much.’