Book Blurb:
Young folk singer Elle Harlow reaches the height of her prowess in 1973, with two wildly beloved albums to her name and a hidden history of impossible heartbreak. When she sets foot on the famed Grand Ole Opry stage, a far cry from the mountain that raised her, Elle gives the biggest performance of her life. Then, to the dismay of shocked fans, her producer, and the man who still loves her, she vanishes.
Almost two decades later, eighteen-year-old Marijohn Shaw is spending her summer pumping gas, writing songs on her broken mandolin, and longing for a mother. Her father, Abe, has always sworn he was the last person to see Elle Harlow alive, but when a meteor strikes the woods of their sleepy Pennsylvania town and a piece of Elle’s past emerges from the wreckage, the truth of her disappearance sets fire to everything Marijohn believes about herself, her music, and her ability to love with abandon.
My Review: 3.25 stars
Wait For Me by Amy Jo Burns made me fall in love with her writing after I read her last book Mercury. I was thrilled to get a gifted early copy for this one. From the start I was enthralled with Marijohn’s story, as well as the meteor that hit near her town that led to a host of events that kept the book propelling forward.
It was interesting that I felt a stronger pull to Marijohn’s storyline, significantly more than the life of Elle Harlow. For me the two felt like separate stories that were not weaving together as much as I’d hoped. I think writing in the music genre has to be done with insane perfection because there are so many great ones to choose from since Daisy Jones and the Six came out in 2019.
I did enjoy when the two female MCs met up, and the baby’s parentage was figured out. I loved the lyrics that the author shared. I still look forward to what’s next from this author, because not every book can be a favorite.
Quotes I liked:
Try to heal everything, and you’ll heal nothing at all.”
“That’s what it meant to sing—to cry out for kinship, and to answer that cry herself.”
“Can something be missing if it isn’t lost? The answer is yes, because the thing that disappears will never tell you where it’s gone.”
