REVIEW: Rock Star by Roslyn Hardy Holcomb

Rock Star (2009) by Roslyn Hardy Hol­comb was released ear­lier this year. Edited to add: This book is a reis­sue. The fol­low­ing review was writ­ten by Senetra.

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Bryan Spencer is the lead singer in an L.A.-based rock band. Fol­low­ing the OD of Brodie, his old­est friend and fel­low band mem­ber, Bryan’s man­ager sends him to Maple Fork, Alabama for some rest and quiet time.

Cal­lie Law­son and her friend Tonya are part­ners in a book­store, and when Bryan comes in to buy some books, he and Cal­lie “meet cute”.

Tonya is a mys­tery writer try­ing to work out a plot point, and has tied Cal­lie up. Bryan enters and play­ing along, asks about hand­cuffs and chains. He goes on to make a pur­chase and returns later to ask Cal­lie to lunch.

Soon they are spend­ing time together as friends, attracted to one another, but not act­ing on the attrac­tion. I think that a large part of that is because Cal­lie needs a friend just as much as Bryan does: out­side of the book­store and the band, nei­ther has much of a per­sonal life.

Cal­lie has Tonya and her fam­ily, and Brian had Brodie, but that’s about it. Bryan is try­ing to come to terms with Brodie’s death and the role he feels he played in his addic­tion. Cal­lie has spent the past five years build­ing her busi­ness and is only now at the point where she can afford to hire help and con­sider her plans for expansion.

They begin to get to know one another and dis­cover the things they have in com­mon, like foot­ball, fish­ing, and a love of sci­ence fic­tion. As their rela­tion­ship changes and expands to include the other peo­ple in their lives, ten­sions, stereo­types, and prej­u­dices flare up, but more on that later.

I like Cal­lie; she’s inde­pen­dent, focused on her goals, and is quite happy to live in a small town while admit­ting that she might have more oppor­tu­ni­ties in a larger city. She wants to be a good role model for her younger sis­ters, and she’s got old-school parents.

Her life isn’t a series of dis­ap­point­ments wrapped in tragedy, there are no crazy exes or psy­cho killers out to get her, and no man­u­fac­tured drama. In short, she’s a lot of women that I know. Cal­lie does have faults, and her biggest one is that she likes to be in con­trol, and if she’s not, she doesn’t always han­dle it well.

Bryan comes pre-packaged with drama and bag­gage; as a rock star; it’s almost part of the job descrip­tion. Brodie was his old­est friend and his writing/composing part­ner, so he feels his death dou­bly. Bryan grew up with a neglect­ful, abu­sive mother, and at one point, Bryan con­tem­plates his past rela­tion­ships and his lack of phys­i­cal affec­tion grow­ing up.

That lack caused him to over­re­act, like a lit­tle kid squeez­ing a puppy, and he had to learn to tem­per his responses or risk freak­ing out the women he dated. In spite of his ear­lier life, Bryan does have a famil­ial rela­tion­ship with his band­mates, Twist and Jon, man­ager, B.T., and B.T.’s wife Maria even calls Bryan her son.

One per­ceived issue/complaint that I’ve seen about inter­ra­cial romances is that they are all “race books”, and the entire plot revolves around how it won’t work out because of race and on and on. I will say that even in the Age of Obama, race is still an issue, but for vary­ing reasons.

Lov­ing vs. Vir­ginia was only 40 years ago, and while inter­ra­cial dat­ing itself might not be as big a deal as it once was, some under­ly­ing issues, such as his­tory and racial stereo­types may come into play. Rock Star does attempt to address some of those issues, specif­i­cally the White man/Black woman dynamic, and in this case, rich and famous White man with “unknown” Black woman.

While race is part of the con­flict, it’s not the only part. As stated, Bryan is rich and famous, while Cal­lie is a small-town Bama girl. Bryan has groupies and has had lots of sex, and while Cal­lie is not a vir­gin, she doesn’t get around.

The only “aw, man” I had while read­ing were some instances of telling not show­ing was when Cal­lie and Bryan were hang­ing out as friends. We got to read that they liked fish­ing, and that they did all these fun things together as they became friends, but we didn’t actu­ally see them doing any of it.

I really enjoyed this book. Some of the con­ver­sa­tions and inci­dents between the char­ac­ters were so funny, and yet so true to what hap­pens in real life, not just between blacks and whites, but men and women, dads and boyfriends, and your group of friends. I don’t think that there was one char­ac­ter I didn’t like, and even the momen­tary vil­lain was redeemed to some extent. Solid B.