Indigo Blues by Danielle Joseph

Indigo Blues by Danielle Joseph
"Indigo:

I never asked to be famous—or infamous. Such is my fate for briefly dating (and dumping) Adam Spade. Yes, the Adam from the indie rock band Blank Stare who wrote "Indigo Blues"—the song that gave the band overnight success, propelled them to New York City, and stole my precious anonymity. Now I'm pawed by fans, stalked by reporters, and pegged as a vicious heartbreaker. And Adam is still calling me. Doesn't he have better things to do?

Adam:

With a hit single and a promising career, I should be on top of the world. People on the street are beginning to recognize me, which is cool. And scary. The band is counting on me to write another hit, but I can't stop thinking about Indigo. Why won't she answer the phone?"- summary from Amazon

I was really excited to read this book because I absolutely loved Joseph's debut Shrinking Violet but, while this is a very good effort, it just didn't amaze me like her debut did.

First, the good. Joseph really knows how to write characters. I loved reading about Adam, Indigo and the people in their lives. She really fleshed them out and made them unique. This is even better since the story is told from two different perspectives. Sometimes multiple perspectives can seem very repetitive and use the same voice. These are two separate, distinct voices and it's such a great idea to take this storyline and see how it's affecting both involved. In Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway, there's the same storyline but we only see Audrey's side. I really liked seeing how each reacted to what's going on regarding the song's popularity and the storyline behind it.

This is also a pretty quick read. It was really easy for me to get lost in the story and I was just turning pages until I stop and realize I'm already halfway through. There were, however, times where a sentence or a paragraph just kinda felt awkward and jarred me out of the story, like it just didn't feel right in the story or for that character to think or say. This happened a few times in the opening pages and so it took me a while to get into the story, but after like 20 pages, I was in and hooked.

Now, what I didn't like as much. I felt like there wasn't enough backstory regarding Indigo and Adam's relationship. I got a little bit of it, but I felt there wasn't enough explanation of it to make me completely care about the characters. The ending was a bit abrupt; I found myself at page 200 wondering how the last 30 pages would play out because it seemed like there was so much that needed to be done before the ending. Also, a bit unrealistic. It felt like the characters did a bit of a 180 in those last 30 pages and I'm left wondering what the heck happened.

Overall, the bad stuff didn't weigh me down too much. It is a very good story, and I'm excited for whatever Joseph puts out next, but it's definitely not perfect.

FTC: Received final paperback at ALA (signed!). Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.