Sweet River Publishing, $3.99
Contemporary Romance, 2021

April Murdock’s New Inspired Muse has a famous rock star called Wally Chastain. 

Yes, I’m not kidding. I actually take a deep breath and consider for a few seconds whether I should laugh out loud or cringe. I can see it now:

“Wally Chastain Tour 2025 — Wear Your Flannel Proudly!” 

Our most wholesomely named rock band frontman ever, who makes music that the author compares to Gun N’ Roses because that’s the kind of super hip music that octogenarian romance authors hip and hot young people these days love. 

Anyway, Wally is in a fix because his brain is jammed, and he can’t make new music. I guess his bandmates are all too dumb or he is too much of a control freak and wants to keep all the songwriting royalties to himself. 

So, he does what every famous and inexplicably wholesome rock star does in this kind of stories: despite being so famous that octogenarian romance authors hip and hot young women break their hips trying to crawl over each other to be the first to sit on his face, he manages to go to this small town where nobody recognizes him.

Our heroine Shiloh Whitefeather is a big fan of another group that is adored by hip and hot young people these days, U2. Seriously, people, I can smell the mothballs and nostalgia emanating from every word in this story. She is also a schoolteacher or whatever it is these wholesome heroines are obligated to do in small towns while waiting for a hot rich man to marry them.

So, this story plays out like every story with this plot line, right down to Shiloh being upset that her new man turns out to be a super-hot and rich man after all.

Not because she’d then be spending most of her time alone while he hangs out with druggies and groupies on the road, not because all his exes will leak out his embarrassing text messages about wanting to chew on his exes’ soiled underwear, and not because she’s a smalltown gal and thus her romance with a world-famous rock star is reasonably and certainly doomed.

No, it’s because she’s all about honesty and trust, because if there is anything that is in excess supply in a romantic Humpty Dumpty dance with a celebrity, it’s definitely honesty. 

Yes, this is one relationship that will endure. 

There are also little moments of cringe, such as the hero telling the heroine that “Whitefeather” is a strange name, when it’s the most cliché kind of name anyone will come up for a Native American. I die inside when those two start extolling the virtues of U2.

Look, I am no hip youngster myself, and I will die on that hill that has a big “With or Without You is one of the best songs ever made!” sign but come on. The author is trying to tell me that the kids today are all about Guns N’ Roses and U2 and the whole thing is giving off a big strong smell of eau de delusion. 

Still, this is another story in the series where the main characters just talk. Seems like the author is averse to having her characters experience any genuine conflict that ranks above an embarrassing flatulence in crowded elevator when it comes to intensity and angst, so the result is a story that never moves past the middling point. It’s not the most emotionally engaging story around, as any plot so far in the Texas Redemption series is just an excuse for two characters to talk in real life or via text messages.

While normally this will lead to a dull read, I’m grateful because this also means that there is no prolonged stupid “You are so handsome and RICH, so I hate you now!” drama. There is also no eye-rolling angst about the hero endlessly doing mental writhing about whether he should tell the heroine that he’s actually very rich and can buy her plenty of awesome expensive things. Many things that would normally make a romance that follows the rock star in small town formula a laughably stupid one are in minimal amounts here because the two main characters are too busy talking. God bless them for that small mercy.

On the downside, all that talking also means that I am subjected to a lot of the author desperately trying to manifest that the music and fashion that she loves from a century ago is still relevant and fashionable today. Sorry, honey, that doesn’t work even for Nora Roberts. 

In the end, this story elicits way too much cringe from me, so I can’t in all honesty say that I have a great time reading it. Still, I suppose people that still want to live in a world that Axl Rose and Bono aren’t 200-year-old mummies but still at the peak of their musicality and virility — well, this story is for them, I guess.