Stay Until We Break
Hub City, Book #2
By Mercy Brown
Author’s Website: http://www.mercybrownwrites.com/#who-is
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
Stars on the Floor (Soft) are going on their first tour, self-funded of course, but their first *real* tour!! A three-week roadtrip with friends, doing what they love, performing!! But sadly for Cole, it will be his last adventure with the band. He hasn’t told them yet, but he is quitting when their tour is over. His mom is getting on his case to grow up, his sister is starting college and needs him to pay her tuition. So he will be moving back home and working for his uncle as a plumber when they get back. A future he doesn’t look forward to, but one he’s resigned to. The time for his dreams are over so that his sister can live hers. He had plans of wild partying while on tour with whichever girls came around. However, his longtime crush Sonia is going along on the tour as the band’s tour manager, and when he sees he has a chance to be with her finally, all the other girls fade to the background for him and he only has eyes for her! But sadly, he knows nothing serious can come from it. She loves Cole the rocker, and doesn’t deserve Cole the plumber, what girl would sign up for that bleak future?
I want to start off with reminding everyone how much I loved Travis in the first book, Loud is How I love You. But poor Trap can’t hold a candle to Cole!
“I’ve been wondering all day what flavor lip gloss you’ve got on.”
“Dr. Pepper,” I say, before my brain starts to work again.
“Lip Smackers?” He laughs. “Really?”
“My mom always puts a ton of them in my stocking at Christmas,” I try to explain, but really, what’s the point now? He already knows my taste in cosmetics hasn’t changed since the seventh grade.
“I like it.”
“You do?”
“Well, let me double-check,” he says, and then he licks his bottom lip before he kisses me again. I feel the tip of his tongue soft against mine, taste the sweetness of his breath as he kisses me deeper. Then he moves his lips, all warm and soft over to my ear and kisses me there until I can’t speak.”
I know have a strange urge to go get some Lip Smackers of my own…
I absolutely loved Cole!! He’s a sweet, loyal, and funny guy that is willing to give up everything he loves, even the girl of his dreams, for his family! He’s had a rough life and he just can’t seem to catch a break.
It was fun watching the relationship between Cole and Sonia develop. It took about half the book for them to find their moment, as Cole wanted their first time to be memorable in a good way. *Swoon* It just made me love him that much more.
“You don’t look better through beer goggles,” she says. “The problem is you look way too fine without them. You’re like a damn demigod.”
“Wait, just a demigod? I was shooting for Zeus.”
“Ask me after we … you know.”
“After you see my thunderbolt?”
“Jesus Christ, you’re impossible.”
But once they popped the seal, so to speak, they were like a couple of horny teenagers.
“Are they always like that?”
“Yes,” Joey says. “Unless they’re cursing each other out, but I think that’s just part of their mating ritual or foreplay or whatever.”
It was a lot of fun seeing Cole be so protective of Sonia though, stepping in to be her pretend boyfriend or later on her pretend husband!
“Sunny, I can’t believe you and Cole got married before me and Travis.”
“Travis married us in the Motel 6 parking lot last night, remember? You were my maid of honor and everything.”
“Goddamn, I’m never drinking PBR again,” she says and makes a fake retching sound.”
But then reality crashes down before either Sonia or Cole are ready for it to. Is there any way to save Cole and their relationship from the inevitable?
As much fun as it was watching Cole and Sonia, seeing the hijinks of the road was pretty entertaining too. The other members of the band along with the members of Crown the Robin were a lot of fun and I’d love to have fun-loving friends like them in my own life. Maybe with less fireworks though.
I have to admit that I’ve fallen in love with this series, Mercy Brown’s writing, and the characters of this fun world. It says a lot when I have books from a couple of my favorite authors, Nalini Singh and J.R. Ward, but I chose to read this book first! And I’m glad I did! I did not want to put this book down and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us next! Bravo, Ms. Brown, I’m hooked, hook line and sinker! There is absolutely nothing I would change about this book, nothing.
I almost forgot to mention, like the last book, Cole and Sonia have their own song too. It’s called Break and at first it seems to be about the band and the tour, which it is, but it’s about Cole and Sonia as a couple too, at least that’s how I interpreted it. To some it may seem pretty crude when you start reading it, but it describes them perfectly. But the last line does you in with the sweetness. I could totally see Cole writing it!
“This is how it happens
We stay out until we break
From Hoboken to Athens
Every road we take
Leads to where we’re going
And I don’t care where it is
All I care about is knowing
That you’ll be there to hear this
Every basement
Every backyard
Every sofa on the way
Is another bed to fuck you in
Another stage to play
And we play until we make it
We stay until we break
We won’t be home for Christmas
Skip the wedding and the wake
Won’t be there through the years
Even if the fates allow
I don’t need to see the future
Because you’re my here and now”
Do yourself a favor and go check this series out!
