[Review] Stay with My Heart - Tashie Bhuiyan

Summary: Liana Sarkar lives and breathes music, hoping to follow in the footsteps of her A&R coordinator father. Maybe if she succeeds, he’ll finally give her the time of day instead of drowning himself in work to distract from the grief of her mother’s passing.

When Liana accidentally sabotages an up-and-coming local band, Third Eye, she makes it her mission to steer them towards success—without them discovering her role in their setback. But as she gets closer to Third Eye, especially their enigmatic leader Skyler Moon, it becomes harder to hide the truth.

With both her heart and their futures on the line, will Liana be able to undo the damage she’s caused? (Pub Date: Jan 02, 2024)

 

I did it. I judged a book by the cover. It's a cute one, but it somehow made me thing this wouldn't be really good. Just another simple story about teenagers for teenagers. The cover screamed at me not to take it seriously. To expect at best a fanfic turned book. Well, if this was a fanfic or a Wattpad story, it deserved being turned into a book (as of course many of them do). My tired eyes went and prejudged it. Bad me.

3.5, rounded up.

Liana's father is a one of those big guys working for an important record company, and it's while he's listening to demos instead of paying attention to his only daughter that Liana meets the group called Third Eye for the first time. Soon, she actually meets the members and falls for the wrong one. He uses her position to get to her father, lies and ultimately ghosts her. Now Liana has not only wronged the father she wants so much the attention but also the members of Third Eye. She decides, thus, to help them improve themselves and prove to be better than the member they've lost.

I love how you really don't know who is the bad guy or the good guy at first. It's so rare for YA's to get me this excited about who the main character will end with.

Liana also faces other issues, especially her fight against depression. I don't know if her attitudes refusing to sick help sooner than later was the best choice to include in a book for younger readers if you really wanted to send them a message, but at least the importance of therapy was very obvious. 

The troubles Liana gets into are very believable too. I'd probably have fallen for the same traps, even if I wouldn't have had her resilience to keep the charade and hide it all while trying to compensate Third Eye. I'd have broken down much, much sooner. And her issues with her father, they were simply heartbreaking. There was no big drama, it was just what it was, which made it even more more bitter. 

The plot wasn't such a novelty, so it's not so memorable. Yet, I loved the time I spent with these characters and I wish I could have been at one of Third Eye's performances. This book won't cross the genre, but I highly recommend it to readers of romantic contemporary YA's.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.