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A review by angieinbooks
Every Time You Hear That Song by Jenna Voris
4.5
I am not emotionally okay after reading this book! I mean that in the best of ways, to be clear.
Darren's favourite singer, Decklee Cassel, has died. She didn't know Decklee, not really. But she feels like she knew her through her music and because Decklee, like Darren, was once a girl who dreamed of getting out of Mayberry, Arkansas, too--something Decklee actually accomplished so spectacularly that she never returned.
When news surfaces that there's an entire unreleased album of Decklee's to be found, along with a life-changing amount of money, Darren knows the music and the money is destined to be hers. So she embarks on her first trip outside of Arkansas with the only person she knows in town who has car: Kendall, her workplace proximity associate, the guy who threw away a full-ride tennis scholarship to university to work full time at a Mayberry gas station.
The novel alternates between Darren's hunt in the present and Decklee's narration of her life, of becoming Decklee Cassel: award-winning country singer beloved by millions of fans. It is inspiring, mysterious, maddening, heartbreaking, beautiful, queer. I didn't want to put it down.
My one criticism, apart from the fact that I solved the mystery early on (and I think that's okay btw) is Darren's believe that she can either stay in Mayberry or she has to leave--that she believed the very act of leaving at all meant she could never return. Or that if she stayed, it meant she could never leave. I just didn't get it. And had it been a passing thought, it would have been okay, but this was a major theme/plot point of the novel.
Darren's favourite singer, Decklee Cassel, has died. She didn't know Decklee, not really. But she feels like she knew her through her music and because Decklee, like Darren, was once a girl who dreamed of getting out of Mayberry, Arkansas, too--something Decklee actually accomplished so spectacularly that she never returned.
When news surfaces that there's an entire unreleased album of Decklee's to be found, along with a life-changing amount of money, Darren knows the music and the money is destined to be hers. So she embarks on her first trip outside of Arkansas with the only person she knows in town who has car: Kendall, her workplace proximity associate, the guy who threw away a full-ride tennis scholarship to university to work full time at a Mayberry gas station.
The novel alternates between Darren's hunt in the present and Decklee's narration of her life, of becoming Decklee Cassel: award-winning country singer beloved by millions of fans. It is inspiring, mysterious, maddening, heartbreaking, beautiful, queer. I didn't want to put it down.
My one criticism, apart from the fact that I solved the mystery early on (and I think that's okay btw) is Darren's believe that she can either stay in Mayberry or she has to leave--that she believed the very act of leaving at all meant she could never return. Or that if she stayed, it meant she could never leave. I just didn't get it. And had it been a passing thought, it would have been okay, but this was a major theme/plot point of the novel.