Author: RaShelle Workman
Publisher: All Night Reads
Released: May 14th 2013
Pages: 286 (eBook)
Buy: Amazon UK / Amazon US
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Sometimes life isn't pretty, but you have to close your eyes and let go...
Maddie Martin's first weekend at college is nothing like she's used to. It's wild, like the wilderness on which the University of Bellam Springs sits. Roped into going to a fraternity party, she literally runs into Kyle Hadley. The boy she's loved since she was nine. The boy she promised all of her firsts to. But that was before his father killed her parents.
Determined to stay away from him, she throws herself into her music. Practicing piano eases her heavy heart, calms the sadness, and pushes away images of Kyle's face.
Until it doesn't.
Her music professor asks her to play a duet for their annual Winter Gala. Doing so means she'll be assured another full ride scholarship. It's an opportunity she can't pass up.
But Kyle is the other half of the duet. And that means hours and hours of practicing.
Weeks of seclusion - just the two of them. And it's more than just music. It's passion like Maddie never believed was possible.
The inevitable happens. She falls in love with him all over again.
But, will loving him be enough to erase all the hate in her heart for his father? Can she look at him, and not see the evil in his family tree?
And maybe it's all a set up. Maybe Kyle is only pretending to care so he can finish what his father started, and kill her too.
To write this review, I wrote a list of things I liked and things I disliked. Let me tell you that there is absolutely nothing on the like list. I tried to find something, I did, but I couldn't. In the least horrible way possible, I think this is the worst New Adult novel I have ever read - and I finished The Edge of Never the other week, so that is certainly saying something.
Maddie and Kyle have been best friends for as long as they can remember - that is, until Kyle's father murders Maddie's parents. Sent to live with her aunt and uncle, the two lose touch, so imagine Maddie's surprise when she starts college and runs smack bang into him! The chemistry they had when they were kids is only stronger, and when they are put together for a piano duet, they can't keep themselves from restarting their relationship. However, their past is not as far behind them as they would like - with a room-mate delving in dodgy waters and Evan's secret phone calls, everything the pair want to forget comes crashing back down on them.
The characters were awful. I didn't like a single one at any given point of the story. Maddie was intolerable. She whined, she cried, she character-slid constantly, and Workman's attempt to make her seem 'innocent' made her seem like a kid. When she got aroused by Kyle, I swear at one point she was all like, I don't think sex is just about making babies. Um, DUH?! Even my little brother knows that, and he's twelve! TWELVE! Maddie was a bratty eight-year-old.
Maddie's room-mate was just as bad, if not more. Workman tried to deal with a lot of different issues, including rape and drug-abuse, and she just seemed to load all of that on her. None of this made a point – none of it told a story. It was just there and useless.
Kyle...as a reader, I was not attracted to him in the slightest. He was cliché and boring, and the chemistry he had with Maddie...well, there wasn't any! It was so dry, it gave the Sahara Desert a run for its money.
Although the characters are bad, they have nothing on the plot. Similar to Maddie's room-mate's ridiculous plot line, the entire storyline was unrealistic and unnecessary. A spoiler here - there is a drug circle, which is why everyone is getting killed. The novel is basically contemporary romance slash music slash Mafia. Slash Mafia, I hear you exclaim, isn't that a bit of an oddball? Yes! Yes it is - it doesn't fit with the genre at all, and is an stupid plot twist.
On top of all this, it was quite badly written, if you can't tell from the overuse of short sentences in the blurb - variety costs nothing! I'm still interested in reading one of Workman's other novels, Exiled, but if her writing in Touching Melody is anything to go by, then I'm not sure I'll enjoy it. I read the first forty percent of the novel thoroughly - the last sixty percent? Saying I skim-read is putting it nicely. I skipped huge chunks of it, sometimes only reading the dialogue which was enough to grasp what was going on.
Overall, I really didn't like Touching Melody. The concept wasn't original, but I did have high hopes for it. If you're looking for a good New Adult read, I wouldn't recommend this. It just misses the mark completely.
Rating: 1/5
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