RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 'Scratch Track' by Eli Lang
Title: Scratch Track
Series: Escaping Indigo #3
Author: Eli Lang
Published: January 29, 2018
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Cover Artist: Natasha Snow/Natasha Snow Designs
Genre: Contemporary Romance; Erotic Romance
Length: 226 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; Angst; Comfort/Hurt; HEA; Rock Star/Musician; Second Chance; Self-discovery; Standalone; CW: Off-Page Suicide
About Scratch Track
Being a roadie isn’t everyone’s idea of a dream job, but it’s all Quinn wants. He loves touring, loves getting to hear amazing music every night and, more than anything, loves being someone the band members of Escaping Indigo can lean on.
When Quinn joins the band in the recording studio, it’s supposed to be fun, but it only seems to remind him of doubts he thought he’d left behind—doubts about his brother’s death, his place with the band, and his ability to care for and support his friends. So when his ex, Nicky, tumbles back into his life, Quinn’s completely unprepared.
The failure of his past romance with Nicky is yet another strike against Quinn’s confidence. But Nicky’s unassuming kindness makes it hard for Quinn to resist a new entanglement. Quinn isn’t sure they won’t make the same mistakes again, but he wants a second chance, even if that means facing the past, learning to let his friends support him, and proving to Nicky that, this time, he’ll be someone Nicky can rely on.
4 HEART READ
REVIEW:
In Scratch Track, Eli Lang’s requiem to grief, music and love serve as counterpoints to pain. I was wowed by her demonstration of how to live on!
Also impressive is that the book works as a standalone. I hadn’t read the first two in this Escaping Indigo series, but still enjoyed the rich cast of characters, who function like a chorus to the main couple’s drama.
Quinn, a road manager, joins his band, Escaping Indigo, as they produce an album, though he’s neither working, nor necessary. He’s escaping his younger brother’s suicide, its associated guilt, as Lang conveys, “and figuring out how my life worked with this giant home where Eric had been.”
Lang pens Quinn “as the guy who listened, and who fixed where I could … took care of them. That was how I liked it. That was how I worked best.” Now, his brother’s death has left Quinn questioning. “I hadn’t ever known what Eric needed. I hadn’t seen any need in him at all. So obviously that (caretaking) talent was a lie.”
Has Quinn isolated himself? Or has Eric’s death revealed Quinn was never the band member’s true friend? “There was something about the way they tuned in to each other, focused on each other, became almost like one mind when they were writing and working on songs, that made me feel…lost. On the outside. Like I was a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. It made me lonely in an abstract way,” Quinn muses to himself.
Immediately before the trauma, Quinn enjoyed a promising flirtation and tryst with Nicky, drummer for another band, Rest in Peach. (Great band name for a novel about grief, no?) They’d promised to maintain contact - until Quinn’s abrupt, unexplained withdrawal.
When Peach records at the same location as Indio, it’s awkward for both men. Nevertheless, Quinn is still drawn towards Nicky, who he reminisces was “easy to be with…He made things simple. He made you want to stand beside him and soak up some sun. So I did.”
It’s not simple. Not knowing about the death, when Quinn ignored Nicky’s overtures, Nicky was hurt. It’s equally painful to discover Quinn didn’t think enough of Nicky to share the pain. But Quinn is better at giving than receiving. Can two distrustful men get back together?
While listening to an old record, thinking back to when he’d first heard it, Quinn realizes it “made me feel for a few minutes like I was in both places, both times.” Much like death differentiates a survivor’s life into before and after, so can love, “as if two side of my life-the side before I’d met Nicky, before I’d slept with him again, and the side after, with everything that meant and everything that came with it – were crashed together.”
This is Lang’s brilliance. Writers often repeat complex concepts throughout a book. But she sorts and shifts through themes of love, responsibility, powerlessness and death, using different contexts, perspectives, and the prisms of different personalities, until reality shines through.
The result is much like a musical fugue. By adding and subtracting flourishes to a basic premise she creates new music, as we watch characters confront their pain and confusion in order to change. Can Quinn, who feels like a fraud, become someone who can support the man he’s coming to love? Can Nicky, burned once, trust again? Should he?
Lang is clearly a musician. I love her descriptions of the role music plays in helping people process their emotions non-verbally. A scene in which Nicky shows Quinn how to play a drum becomes a blueprint for how to move on. Music aficionados will be impressed.
I think I highlighted more phrases in Scratch Track than any book I’ve ever read. Eli Lang’s novel deserves 4.5 stars.
A copy of Scratch Track was provided to Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter, by Riptide Publishing, at no cost and with no expectations in return. We offer our fair and honest opinion on behalf of our readers.
Meet the Author
Eli Lang is a writer and drummer. She has played in rock bands, worked on horse farms, and had jobs in libraries, where she spent most of her time reading every book she could get her hands on. She can fold a nearly perfect paper crane and knows how to tune a snare drum. She still buys stuffed animals because she feels bad if they’re left alone in the store, believes cinnamon buns should always be eaten warm, can tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the tardigrade, and has a book collection that’s reaching frightening proportions. She lives in Arizona with far too many pets.
For more from Eli be sure and visit her website!
