Week 34 Review: Stay With My Heart

From Goodreads:

From the author of Counting Down with You and A Show for Two comes a new YA contemporary about a girl who accidentally sabotages an up-and-coming local band and falls for the guitarist while secretly trying to make up for her mistake.

Liana Sarkar lives and breathes music, hoping to follow in the footsteps of her A&R coordinator father. Maybe if she succeeds, he'll finally give her the time of day instead of drowning himself in work to distract from the grief of her mother's passing.

When Liana accidentally sabotages an up-and-coming local band, Third Eye, she makes it her mission to steer them towards success—without them discovering her role in their setback. But as she gets closer to Third Eye, especially their enigmatic leader Skyler Moon, it becomes harder to hide the truth.

With both her heart and their futures on the line, will Liana be able to undo the damage she's caused?

My Review:
Yeah, Tashie Bhuiyan is now an auto-buy author for me. I binged her first two books (though opposite to publication dates) and I loved them. This book, the synopsis sounded really great, but I was still a bit nervous, because contemporary books still really aren't my thing. But Tashie Bhuiyan books have everything that I need to be entertained! 

At this point, it's a clear theme in Tashie Bhuiyan books, that there's some sort of problem with the relationship between the narrator and her parent(s.) Which sucks for the characters, but is very much something that happens in real life, and adding in that they're all diaspora just adds another layer to the conflict. How Liana's bad relationship with her dad is tied into the plot, with him being in music, and how she messed things up for the Third Eye band, yeah, I had to read more! 

I didn't read the whole synopsis right before picking up this book. So I had an uneasy feeling, and when that betrayal went down, oh, that was infuriating, on behalf of all parties besides the one doing the betraying! I felt badly for Liana and the band members, it sucked that he did that to them! 

The anxiety I felt for Liana, to hold that secret close to her, because of how it would affect the band if-and when-they found out, it had my turning the pages so quickly so I could be released. And this story lent itself well to frantic page turning with short chapters. I had to see how everything would resolve! And it went to a pretty good place in the end, given everything that preceded it! 

This was an absolutely amazing read, and I can't wait for whatever is next from Tashie Bhuiyan! 

Author: Tashie Bhuiyan
Read: August 20th, 2023
Source: Edelweiss 
Reason Why: Love her writing and it sounded really great, and it's a SAC 2023 Book and a WoW Book! 
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Expected Publication: January 2nd 2024

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars