⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Play yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done. 🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 4.7/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
The Opening
Mal is the drummer of Stage Dive, and he is an absolute force of nature. Childlike enthusiasm, completely unfiltered, always has something random to say or do, and makes every single scene he’s in more interesting just by being in it. This book is his, and it delivers.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
The Setup
Anne is dealing with a lot. Her roommate Sky — who she’d been covering for financially after Sky lost her job — has vanished without a word, taking all the furniture, clearing out her room, and leaving Anne with eight days until rent is due and a serious chunk of money owed to her that she’s never seeing again. Sky also unfriended both Anne and Reese on her way out, which says everything about her character. Reese is Anne’s best guy friend — also her boss, since he owns the bookshop where she works — and while he offers to help financially and even offers his couch, Anne knows Reese sleeps with basically everyone and isn’t keen on that arrangement. Lauren, her neighbour from the building and a character we know from book one, and her boyfriend Nate, invite Anne over to David and Ev’s place. Anne reluctantly goes, mostly because her apartment is currently a depressing, furniture-free mess. On the patio, Anne steps out to take a call from Reese and thinks she’s alone. She isn’t. Mal has been sitting in a dark corner the whole time, and he hears everything — the Sky situation, the money, all of it.
Mal Moves In
By the end of the night Mal has told Ben, one of the other band members, that he’s doing the “David and Ev thing” — settling down, moving in with Anne. Anne has no idea what’s going on. She is standing right there and is completely confused. Ben and Mal make a bet: twenty thousand dollars that Mal won’t last until the band goes on tour. Shortly after, Mal accidentally sees Ev naked and David kicks him out. Mal shows up at Anne’s door — not just AT her door, but already inside it when she gets home — earlier than even he expected, as he puts it — and moves himself in. He’s paid her rent. He’s replaced all the furniture Sky took. And all he needs in return is for Anne to act as his girlfriend. He won’t explain why. He just needs her to play the role. What follows is the best kind of chaos. Mal nicknames her Pumpkin and uses it constantly. He announces she’s his girl while a brunette is literally hanging off him at a party, then clocks that this might look bad — “oh good point, this monogamy thing is hard” — and is completely genuine about it. He is, as advertised, a character. Lauren and Nate, sharing a wall with them, have loud middle-of-the-night sex. “Pumpkin — Am I in hell?” — Mal Mal decides they need to defend their honor. He and Anne end up jumping on the bed together doing the most chaotic, not-quite-dirty-talk banter — which includes Bread — until the bed breaks. They fall asleep cuddling on the couch. Anne’s sister Lizzy walks in the next morning, figures out immediately who Mal is, and informs him that Anne had his posters on her wall as a kid. Anne would like to disappear.
Reese
Lauren has always felt that Reese takes advantage of Anne — knowing Anne has feelings for him while happily sleeping with everyone else. And she’s not wrong. After she is with Mal, Reese eventually shows up at Anne’s steps with flowers, having finally figured out what he’s been missing. Anne tells him it’s too late. Mal, watching this, thinks she’s about to end their arrangement — and instead she tells him no, she’s not breaking up with him. He admits, almost surprised at himself, that she’s his girlfriend for real now. He didn’t mean for it to happen, but it’s too late to pretend otherwise.
The Harder Stuff
Ev notices early on that something is off with Mal — sometimes manic, sometimes staring into nothing, not talking about whatever is going on. When his parents visit and something happens with his mom at dinner, the band confronts him directly. He takes off immediately to play the drums and hammer it out. Anne knows exactly where he’s gone. She tells Ev, and David goes to play with him — a quiet, no-words moment of friendship that’s one of the best scenes in the book. It’s in the aftermath of all this that the two of them really open up to each other. Anne tells Mal she once walked in on her mom about to end her life — and her mom kept trying even after being caught. Anne was a teenager, her father had just left, and everything fell on her shoulders: managing the crisis, taking care of her thirteen-year-old sister Lizzy, holding the whole thing together alone. Mal listens to all of this and then tells her the truth about what’s been going on with him: his mom has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. They’ve given her only a few months. His mom already loves Anne. She is, as far as she’s concerned, exactly what Mal needs.
The Concert and the Proposal
At the first concert of the tour, Mal’s mom is close to the end. After he sees her fall while in the crowd, Mal starts drinking and proposes to Anne — and Anne, who knows him by now, knows immediately it’s not coming from the right place. He’s proposing because it’s what he knows his mom would want to see. She turns him down. He walks out and goes completely silent — won’t talk to her, won’t answer her texts, including one where she offers to come to him while his mom is in her final days. He texts back NO. That’s it. The tour gets cancelled. Then it’s Anne’s birthday. She has a tradition with Reese — they never miss each other’s birthday. But Reese is late. She goes outside and finds him rolling around on the lawn fighting with someone. It’s Mal. She breaks up the fight — with her face. Reese accidentally punches her. While they are tending to her she hears a sound from a box — and Mal pulls out a dog. She had mentioned once that she always wanted a dog as a kid but her mom wouldn’t allow it. He remembered. He named the dog Killer. He explains that his mom helped him work through everything while she was dying. She helped him figure out what he actually wanted and why he was scared of it. And while Anne can’t have pets in her building — Mal took care of that too. He bought her a condo so she could have the dog she missed out on. They invite Lizzy and Anne’s mom for Thanksgiving. They’re happy.
Best Part of This Book
Mal. Full stop. The bed-breaking scene, the Pumpkin nickname, David showing up to play drums with him without a word being said — Mal is the kind of character who makes every scene better just by existing in it, and watching him quietly fall apart and then put himself back together was genuinely moving. He is also consistently my favorite character from the whole series.
Worst Part of This Book
Nothing significant. If anything, the Reese thread loses some steam once it becomes clear he’s never really in the running — but that’s a minor complaint in an otherwise really solid book.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥 — Warm and present but not the main draw. The emotional storyline carries the book far more than the heat does.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Completely satisfied. The dog. The condo. The Thanksgiving dinner. Mal figuring out what he wants and showing up for it in the most Mal way possible — with a puppy named Killer and a fight on someone’s lawn.
Would I Reread It?
Yes — already have.
The Twist We Didn’t See Coming
Mal buying the condo so Anne could have the dog she always wanted. He paid attention to a throwaway comment and built an entire gesture around it. Sound familiar? Kylie Scott has a type of hero and I am completely here for it.
Who Is This For
Anyone who loved Lick and wanted more of the Stage Dive world. Readers who love a hero who seems chaotic on the surface but is quietly paying attention to everything. And anyone who needs a book that makes them laugh out loud while also quietly wrecking them a little.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book Amazon.ca | Amazon.com 📱 Ebook Amazon Kindle .ca | Amazon Kindle .com 🎧 Audiobook Audible Canada | Audible US | Libro.fm 🎁 New to Audible? Get 3 months free (US) 🎁 New to Libro.fm? Get 2 free audiobooks
📚 More from the Stage Dive Series
Book 1 — Lick | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.1/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — [Read the Review]
Book 2 — Play | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.7/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — [Read the Review]
Book 3 — Lead | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.6/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — [Read the Review]
Book 4 — Deep | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 4.1/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — [Read the Review]
Series Review | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — [Read the Review]
Ready for more from LD? Find them here Plot Twisted. 🔥 🎧 | Series: Stage Dive Book 2 | Genre: Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | Narrator: Andi Arndt