Author: Laura Nowlin
Published: January 5th, 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Pages: 220
ISBN: 978-149-260-290-3
Price: $12.11 (Book Depository) // $9.95 (Amazon
)*Digital ARC was received from Sourcebooks through Netgalley*
Rating: 3/5 stars
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I always fall for novels about music. It's not always necessary talking about music, but just put the word "song" on the title and I'll read it. Well, that's the case with This Song is (Not) for You by Laura Nowlin. I must admit that the cover is not that beautiful. It's not the kind of novel with very captivating cover which will hypnotize people to buy it. But, yeah, the "song" word works (for me). Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity. I had to shut down my old NetGalley account in order to have a clean slate in book review. Hopefully it will work well. So, back to the novel. I haven't heard anything about Laura Nowlin. I thought she's a newcomer, but it turns out she already has a book before This Song is (Not) for You and she has quite lot fans. That's why I started this book on my Kindle App with a pretty high expectation.
Ramona is just an average high school student who doesn't have many friends because everyone thinks that she's weird. But, she has Sam who is always beside her. The "weird" thing about Ramona is that she always has feeling about something. She feels like Sam is meant to meet her and so does Tom, a guy whom she met at an audition. She feels like Tom is meant to be in her band. So, they three get along and play music together. They do it great. I, of course, cannot hear the song. According to how Nowlin describes it, it sounds great. I imagine Fun. kind of songs. Ramona on the drum, Sam on the guitar, and Tom as the chaos maker with his own instruments.Music will always be a part of my life. A huge part. But there are other things in life that I also want, and I don't want to give them up to pursue just one thing. - Tom
Following their story to reach the dream and figure out their future is kind of entertaining. They are bond together but somehow they have different goals. When they're trying to be honest to each other, they're afraid to hurt someone else. I can feel how strong their friendships. I can understand how important they are to each other. So, yeah, I have to give a thumb up to Nowlin for this. I've never read a friendship as strong as Ramona's. But things get weirder when we talk about relationship. Well, don't be surprised. Don't you ever heard someone said, "It's impossible for guy and girl be in a friendship without falling for each other,"? There's something going on between Ramona, Sam, and Tom. But I can't give you more details about that because it's shocking! I was like shaking my head, confused, a little bit disagree. I was like "what the ****?!" But, the final judgement might be different based on the readers' culture. I have been warned.
Overall, I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. The story's idea is not unique, but Nowlin has her own way by putting a lot of music things (which is great). Describing music and successfully transfer the feeling to the readers is not easy. Nowlin did it great. I was a little bit struggling to understand some musical meaning, but it doesn't affect my understanding of the whole story. So, it's fine. Unfortunately, this story is very lack of family's value. I think it would be great if Nowlin brings the reader to get to know each family better in order to understand the sexual issue.
