🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 4.6/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Lead yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
Jimmy Ferris is the lead singer of Stage Dive, freshly out of rehab, and he has successfully driven away every single person hired to help him stay sober. Enter Lena Morrissey — no-nonsense, broke, and absolutely unwilling to take his shit. This is their story, and it’s messy and earned.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
How Lena Got Here
Lena wasn’t supposed to end up as Jimmy’s sober companion. She was doing admin work at the band’s manager Adrian’s office — a man the entire Stage Dive universe has collectively decided to dislike, and for good reason. She couldn’t get him the specific donuts he wanted because they weren’t made yet, so Adrian fired her. Mal witnessed the whole thing, clocked immediately that Lena was someone who didn’t take anyone’s bullshit, and decided she was exactly who Jimmy needed. And that’s how she ended up living with the most difficult man in rock music.
The Opening
Book three picks up right where Play left off — Lori, Mal’s mom and surrogate mother to the rest of the band, has just died. Jimmy is losing it. He’s asking Lena for something, anything, to take the edge off. Demanding she get him a drink. She manages to calm him down, and he sobs into her. He tells her his mom called. She wanted what she always wants — money. And if she doesn’t get it, she plans to show up at Lori’s funeral and make a scene.
The funeral is brutal. Jimmy had committed to delivering a eulogy and completely froze. Lena gets him through it. At the wake, his mom shows up anyway — having threatened to tell everyone everything if Jimmy doesn’t keep paying her — and lashes out, scratching him across the face. Lena doesn’t think. She just steps in and pushes the mom away.
That night, cleaning up his cuts, something shifts between them. He’s still grumpy. She’s starting to develop feelings she has absolutely no business developing.
The Crush
Lena’s feelings progress quietly and then loudly. She steals one of Jimmy’s shirts to sleep in and claims to have no idea where it went when he is looking for it. He keeps catching her looking at him and tells her to stop. She keeps playing it off. They’ve developed a habit of spending evenings together and it’s making everything significantly more complicated.
When she finally decides she has to quit, Jimmy finds out through a message from Tom — the person Lena had quietly lined up as her replacement — and confronts her. She admits she has feelings for him. Jimmy, instead of handling this with any grace, decides the solution is to help her get over him. They list his flaws. They go for a run. Nothing works.
So he sets her up with Ben.
The Dating Disaster
Jimmy drives Lena to her date with Ben and then invites himself to sit down at the table. He orders her a drink. He provides a running critique of everything both of them are doing wrong. Ben, for his part, spends most of the date texting someone under the table — something that becomes significant in book four, where we find out who was on the other end of those messages and what it means for Ben’s own story.
The date ends with Ben pretending to go to the bathroom and quickly leaving. Can’t blame him.
Lena then goes on a date with Reese — Anne’s best guy friend from Play, who is still quietly in love with Anne and clearly going through the motions. That goes nowhere. Then she goes out with Dean, who works for the band, and they actually have a good night dancing. Jimmy sees them together and tells her that if she’s there she’s working and she shouldn’t be messing around with Dean in front of him.
He is, obviously, jealous. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.
The Mess in the Middle
Jimmy eventually breaks down her door after she locks him out, apologizes, and she convinces him to at least meet her replacement. He agrees and then turns the whole thing into a circus by inviting everyone from the band, and their ladies, over. She gets mad and goes out with Dean that same night. While she’s out she sees Jimmy’s mom on TV trashing him publicly — she’s decided if he won’t pay her, she’ll burn him instead. Lena runs home. Jimmy has locked himself in his room. While Jimmy is refusing to let anyone in, she decides she can play at the same thing Jimmy did and she tries to kick the door down. She cannot kick the door down. Jimmy hears her trying and opens it himself. She is clearly physically hurt and he calls a doctor to take care of her.
Later, they talk about the tension. Jimmy proposes they sleep together. They do. He takes off immediately after. As Mal says, he has zero aftercare.
He tries to make it up to her by buying her a camera — he’d noticed her developing a real passion for photography — and offering her a spot on tour as the apprentice to the band’s photographer. Lena points out that he is trying to buy her way out of an apology. She won’t accept it without the actual words. He eventually gets there, they make up, and he tells her he wants more.
Then Lena’s sister calls.
The Sister
The backstory: Lena’s boyfriend cheated on her with her sister. They’re now engaged and getting married. The sister calls to guilt Lena into filling in as a bridesmaid because one dropped out. Jimmy grabs the phone over Lena’s protests and calls the sister out on everything — what she did, why nobody should be asking Lena to simply be okay with it, why this is a burn-bridges level offense. Once Lena is finally fired up enough, she unleashes on her sister herself.
Her sister still asks her to come to the wedding. Lena, somehow, agrees to go.
Jimmy books her first class tickets, a rental car, a hotel room — and then after an emotional moment between them where Lena tells him she loves him, he freezes completely. Goes cold. Sets limits. Tells her he’s not coming to the wedding after all. She tells him the only way this ends is if he fires her. He agrees. She leaves.
The Wedding
At the wedding — which, again, why she attended is beyond me, but here we are — Lena runs into her father and admits she made a mess of things with Jimmy. The following day she’s sitting in quiet self-pity when Jimmy walks in, grabs the microphone, and sings to her in front of everyone. He tells her to come back, that they’ll work something out.
It’s not enough. She says no.
And that’s when he finally says it — his mom told him no one could ever love him. That’s what he’s been carrying. That’s why he’s been pushing her away.
Lena tells him that’s not true. She loves him. And they go from there.
Best Part of This Book
Jimmy answering Lena’s sister’s phone and calling her out on everything she deserved to be called out on. And the mom reveal at the wedding — the moment you finally understand why someone so talented and so loved has spent his whole life convinced he isn’t worth it.
Worst Part of This Book
The stretch where Jimmy is simultaneously refusing to commit and getting visibly jealous of every man Lena talks to runs a little long. You can only watch someone be that oblivious for so many chapters before it starts to wear on you.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥 — Present and consistent throughout, though the emotional tension does most of the heavy lifting. Content warnings for addiction, relapse fear, and a toxic parent dynamic.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Satisfied. The wedding scene is exactly the kind of public grand gesture this book earns — not because it’s flashy, but because of everything it cost Jimmy to get there. And Lena holding her ground until he actually said the words was exactly right.
Would I Reread It?
Yes — already have.
The Character We Loved to Hate
Adrian, the manager. Books one through three have done nothing to redeem him and everything to confirm that he is the worst person in this entire universe. The donut incident alone tells you everything you need to know.
Who Is This For
Readers who love a grumpy sunshine dynamic with real emotional depth underneath it. Anyone who wants a hero whose damage is specific and painful and eventually, finally, addressed. Stage Dive fans who have been waiting for Jimmy’s book since book one — it delivers.
Where to Get
📖 Physical Book
Amazon | Bookshop.org
📱 Ebook
Amazon | Bookshop.org
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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]
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