Louder Than Love by Jessica Topper

 

This was one of those books that everyone was talking about and bless Carolyn's heart, she got for our Kindles. And when I say bless Carolyn's heart, I mean it without question because this book rocked my world.

This is the story of Kat (aka Tree) whose husband died in a train crash when their daughter was only one year old. They were happy and his loss took away part of Kat's soul. So the story starts when Abbey, the daughter is 4 and obsessed with a children's show about a crime solving cat. Kat volunteers at the local library and wants to have a program with music and she hunts down the man who wrote the theme song: Adrian.

Adrian has a secret: he was in a hugely popular rock band that broke up years previous. He was addicted to drugs, has a complicated history with his band mates and he's unhappy as hell.

Kat and Adrian start to fall in love and both are hiding huge parts of their past. Adrian's past becomes known and they work through a lot of his stuff but Kat is still hiding a lot of the depth of her own loss.

There was so much to this book. There was the love developing between the main characters. There was the relationship with Abbey. There was the relationship between Kat and her dead husband (told in such a lovely way that it added more depth to the story). There was also the love affair with New York (another thread of the book that meant so much).

The writing was lovely. The story was adult and layered. After reading so many giggly women and their alpha-holic men, to read adults falling in love with true emotional baggage, it was breath-taking.

I read the book in a day. I reread parts the next day. The day after that I started another book but was still thinking about Adrian and Kat.

Read it. It's brilliant.