Posted on Plot Twisted | By LD
Rock star romance is a minefield. Half the time the premise is doing all the work and the actual book can’t back it up. The other half, you get something that earns every single star.
These three earned it. All five stars. All Kylie Scott. All full spoilers. Let’s go.
⚠️ Full spoilers on all three books below. You’ve been warned.
LICK — Kylie Scott ★★★★★
🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 4.1/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | Narrated by Andi Arndt | Stage Dive Book 1
She woke up married to a rock star in Vegas. He’d already bought her a five-carat ring. He remembered everything she told him while she was drunk. And then he blew it anyway.
What Actually Happens
Evelyn — Ev — wakes up on her twenty-first birthday in Las Vegas with zero memory of the night before and a tattoo on her ass that says “David.” She is married. She finds out fast who to: David Ferris, lead singer of Stage Dive, one of the biggest rock bands in the world. The marriage hits the press before she even learns his last name.
What matters immediately: David did not treat this like a drunken mistake. He bought her a five-carat ring. This was real to him before she even knew his name.
The best stretch of this book is the middle — David takes Ev to a house he owns but has never visited, and they actually get to know each other. Here’s the thing about David: drunk Ev told him everything the night they met. Her dreams, her fears, her whole self. And he remembered all of it. He paid attention to a woman he barely knew while she was wasted and held onto every word. That one detail is the entire argument for who he is.
The Martha situation: Martha is David’s PA and has been cold to Ev since day one. The reason: Martha was David’s first love. He bought a house for their future. She cheated on him with his own brother Jimmy. The earring David wears every single day — bought with his first paycheck, gave her the matching one — he never took it off. Neither did she.
At a show, Martha shows Ev the earring. Ev connects every piece of it in one awful second. She finds David — kicks open a door — Martha’s hands are in his hair. David’s response to her demanding an explanation: nothing. His response when she says she’s leaving: stay without explanation or we’re done forever.
She goes home to Portland. Honestly? She should have.
The reunion: Weeks later he turns up and explains: Jimmy went to rehab, they did therapy, twenty-eight days. She tells him to get lost. Then fucks him in an alley and tells him that was goodbye.
He is not deterred. He walks her home from work every day. Brings pizza because he can see she’s lost weight. He does this through her brother trying to fight him, through Martha calling and Ev kicking him out. Every day. He eventually tells her the truth — Martha cheated on him with Jimmy — and then she finds out he sold the house he’d bought for Martha and moved to Portland. Three blocks from her work. Recording an album. Didn’t tell her.
She gives him a ring. He gives hers back. She takes him to meet her unimpressed parents and tells them she’s the luckiest woman in the world.
The comeback earns it. The breakup scene is rough to sit with and the book knows it.
PLAY — Kylie Scott ★★★★★
🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 4.7/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | Narrated by Andi Arndt | Stage Dive Book 2
Mal is the drummer. He moved himself into Anne’s apartment, paid her rent, replaced all her furniture, and eventually bought her a condo so she could have the dog she mentioned wanting once as a kid. He named the dog Killer. This is LD’s favourite book in the series.
What Actually Happens
Anne’s roommate Sky vanishes without warning — takes all the furniture, clears her room, leaves Anne with eight days until rent is due and money she’s never seeing again. At a gathering at David and Ev’s place, Anne steps outside to take a private call. She thinks she’s alone. She isn’t. Mal has been sitting in a dark corner the whole time and hears everything.
By the end of that night, Mal has told Ben he’s “doing the David and Ev thing.” Anne is standing right there with no idea what’s happening. Ben and Mal immediately bet twenty thousand dollars on whether Mal will last until tour.
Mal shows up at Anne’s apartment — already inside it when she gets home — and moves himself in. He’s paid her rent. He’s replaced all the furniture. In exchange: she acts as his girlfriend. He won’t say why. He calls her Pumpkin immediately and constantly.
The chaos: Their neighbours Lauren and Nate have very loud middle-of-the-night sex. Mal: “Pumpkin — am I in hell?” He and Anne fight back. The banter that follows — somehow involving Bread — ends with the bed collapsing. They fall asleep on the couch. Anne’s sister Lizzy walks in the next morning, recognizes Mal immediately, and informs him that Anne had his posters on her wall as a kid. Anne would like the floor to swallow her.
The harder part: Something is wrong with Mal. Ev notices — sometimes manic, sometimes completely blank. When the band confronts him, he takes off to play the drums. Anne knows where he’s gone and tells Ev. David shows up to the drum kit and plays with him — no words, no explanation, just plays. One of the best scenes in this series.
In the aftermath they actually open up. Mal tells her the truth: his mom has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. A few months. His mom already loves Anne. As far as she’s concerned, Anne is exactly what Mal needs.
The proposal: At the first concert of tour, his mom is close to the end. Mal starts drinking and proposes. Anne knows immediately it’s coming from the wrong place — he’s doing it because it’s what his mom wants to see. She turns him down. He goes silent, won’t answer texts, texts NO when she offers to come be with him while his mom is dying.
Then it’s Anne’s birthday. Reese is late. She goes outside and finds him rolling around on the lawn fighting someone. It’s Mal. She breaks up the fight with her face — Reese accidentally punches her. While they’re sorting her out, she hears something from a box.
He pulls out a dog.
His mom, while dying, had helped him figure out what he actually wanted. And at some point in those conversations he’d remembered that Anne mentioned — once, offhandedly, as a kid story — that she’d always wanted a dog but her mom wouldn’t allow it.
He named the dog Killer.
He also bought her a condo. She couldn’t have pets in her current building. He took care of that too.
Kylie Scott’s heroes love in the thing you mentioned once. Mal is the best example of this in the entire series.
FAMOUS IN A SMALL TOWN — Kylie Scott ★★★★★
🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 5.0/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
A rock star moves to a small town. The whole town agrees to call him “Garry” and protect him from the press. He buys the whole town. He proposes on stage. She was already pregnant and he didn’t know yet.
What Actually Happens
Garrett Hayes — internationally famous musician — moves next door to Ani in Wildwood. The town of Wildwood immediately and collectively decides to call him “Garry” and protect his identity from anyone who asks. That tells you everything about both the town and Garrett: people want to cover for him.
Ani has anxiety and PTSD from a home invasion years ago — a man with a knife, a scar on her neck, years of managing her nervous system in ways that are just part of her life now. Garrett doesn’t try to fix it. He pays attention to it. He builds space around it without making it a big thing. That’s the whole character.
The dynamic between them runs on “non-dates” — things that are clearly dates that neither of them is ready to call dates yet. The whole town is watching. Nobody is playing it cool except Ani and Garrett, who are doing a terrible job of it.
Smith, Garrett’s bandmate, is around enough that he absolutely deserves his own book. The town thinks so too. Just putting that out there.
When the press eventually figures out who “Garry” actually is and descends on Wildwood, the town closes ranks. These people have decided to protect Garrett Hayes and they mean it.
The ending: Ani drives twelve hours to LA when she thinks Garrett might be leaving. She’s not going to just let it happen. Garrett proposes on stage at a bar in front of the whole town. What he doesn’t know: Ani found out she was pregnant in the bathroom right before he got on stage. She goes out there already knowing. He proposes not knowing.
Everything that makes this book work — the slow build, the town, the way Garrett shows up for her without ever making her feel like a project — lands in that moment. Five stars. No notes.
What These Three Have in Common
Besides Kylie Scott writing all of them: every hero in this list pays attention to the small things. David remembers everything drunk Ev told him. Mal hears a throwaway comment about a childhood dog and builds an entire living situation around it. Garrett builds space around Ani’s anxiety without ever making her feel like she needs to explain herself.
The rock star premise is not doing the work here. The premise is just the setup. The actual work is in the details — and Kylie Scott knows exactly which details matter.
If you haven’t started: Lick first, then Play, then Famous in a Small Town as a standalone whenever you’re ready. All five stars. All worth it.
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