Once More with Feeling

Fun summer read set in the entertainment and theatre world - this was a fast enjoyable read! Kathleen and Cal have a complex and rocky history from their years together on tour as musicians, after meeting at summer camp as kids. They meet again to work on Kathleen's best friend's musical and their journey tells a story about second chances.

Somewhere between 3.5~4 stars.

I really enjoyed reading this book, the characters were messy and not always making great decisions but it was the kind of mess that is fun to follow. I also really really loved all of the Broadway stuff in here. This book worked for me a lot better than Sussman's previous but it still didn't totally work for me as a romance.

I also really loved the focus on friendship and seeing how Kathleen and Harriet's relationship grew and changed over the years.

I feel like we (meaning the reader and our main character Kathleen) never actually got to know the love interest Cal as a person. After finishing the book I don't know what he sees in her and I don't know why they love each other, other than attraction. I really wish this book had been dual perspective, I think that would have fixed my issues with the romance plot (but also I tend to like multi POV stories more anyway, wouldn't it be fun to have the flashback's in his POV?)

I think that what I have learned now having read this book and Funny You Should Ask is that Elissa Sussman and I care about different things when it comes to romance. Both of the books I've read from her focus a lot on the initial meeting and then the pining and angst before the characters figure it out and can be together again. While my favorite part of reading romance tend to be once the relationship has started, seeing the characters get to know each other and keep finding new reasons to like each other, I like reading the slow deep conversations and scenes where the characters have each others backs in situations with outside conflict, and I want those sorts of scenes to be the majority of the story.

All that being said, I think I loved Once More With Feeling and I will definitely be reading Sussman's future books. It was highly entertaining and emotional (I cried, but I'm an easy crier) and I could totally see myself rereading it someday, it just doesn't totally work for me as a romance.

This is a book where I must have read a pre-release review of it, then put a hold on it, and then when it came in I was like “what's this?” I must have read about the Broadway subplot and decided to request it, but then when the cover was like “TikTok sensation!” I was like, “uh oh” bc it seems that I don't usually agree with BookTok's favs.

But I checked it out and for me, this was perfectly cromulent. I liked all the theater kid backstory stuff but I never got too invested in the romance plot. To me it felt like it was a fanfiction AU but I didn't know the characters. Like if I had already been invested in these characters I'd be like “hell yeah he's a director and she's an actress? Can't wait to see how this turns out” but like, I wasn't.

But I did read the whole thing because it was a pretty easy read and because I wanted to see how thins turned out for Riveted! the Broadway musical based on Rosie the Riveter.

Also the cover of the book has a cat on it and the cat is like BARELY in it.