Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Received this novel as a preview copy. I am not sure if I would have picked this up off a bookshelf at a book store. Not sure why, but I wanted to be honest about that.

The first chapter was a fraught with wanting to give the book up versus moving on more. I stopped reading it for a week. I then skipped the second chapter and went to the third. That helped for me.

Dense with characters and situations it was while reading was too much for me. The main character is a musician named Circus. His love life is one for sure. I felt badly for each and everyone one of his relationships. This was what made the difficult decision for me to not really like this book. These were strong women taken by Circus. It made me really sad.

The author’s lyrical and musical writing was beautiful. So there is that.

This was a complicated read and not easy for me, but I did finish it. Complex relationships (some very messy) and a complicated list of characters to follow made this a read that I had to force myself to read and complete.

I am grateful for the opportunity I had to read this book. I am always very interested to see what creative authors who have completed writing programs like Ms Wardell have put out as debut novels (I think this is just that?) But I hesitate to say this, this book was too much. This is not a breezy easy read, not because it’s subject matter is hard, just a lot to keep track of. The book will ruffle some readers because the characters are not particularly likeable… but they are in a way because they are so complicated and complicit in their enabling behaviors. This enablement is difficult to read and have empathetic feelings for them because as a reader nothing is more frustrating (at least to me) than not having a single nugget of “something” to hold onto to root for the characters. It serves the story but not the reader.

Would I suggest it? I say maybe. If you are looking for a book dense with characters and lovely lyrical writing that are taken of and that take advantage of one another with the guise of love, than this is for you.

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