Lantern Star Books, $3.99, ISBN 978-1005806774
Contemporary Romance, 2019
With a title like Running Hurt, I thought perhaps foolishly that I’d be getting a more authentic-seeming love story with a rock star hero. You know, the drugs, the groupies, the manager and handlers that force the hero to duet with BTS in order to stay relevant, and so forth.
Instead, what I get is a story that follows the same pattern and trend as pretty much every other new adult romance with a rock star ever.
Dominic Saxton is so sweet and sanitized, he’s basically the PR agency version of a so-called rock star aimed at prepubescent kids. Aimee Mann Jonas is the usual sassy heroine that, of course, falls on the hero’s feet due to some mishap that sees her head getting hurt.
He develops an intense attraction to her, she’s like “Ooh me? Really, me? Oh, I better keep being sassy because that’s so me even if deep inside I am bitterly jealous of every woman that steps within 10 feet of him because romance heroines aren’t supposed to possess a degree of confidence when it comes to attracting mates!” She may posture that she is no one special, but once his fans spot him with her, they speculate that she must be a model, an actress. The author, in other words, is telling me that the heroine is a knock-out without actually telling me that.
The rest of the band is like an entourage of BFFs and sequel baits, and they exist here solely to pat Dom’s back and assure Aimee that he’s actually a nice guy worth putting out to.
The conflict is not of the STDs he have, or his back and forth into rehab, or how he dated that annoying one in Fifth Harmony for PR, but that she can’t believe that she’s hot enough to attract and keep his attention. In other words, the whole thing is an excuse for everyone to bend over backward to assure Aimee that she is hot crap while she shakes her head insistently and protests that she can’t believe that.
The whole thing goes on exactly as the autopilot is programmed to, and I don’t know. I like rock stars because they are mad, bad, and dangerous to shag. The so-called rock star in this one, though… shudder. Maybe if I were much younger and I actually believe that BTS is made up of punk rock members that are all staying celibate for our wedding night, I may buy the fantasy that Saffron Blu—that has to be a pseudonym right, because come on—is selling me here.
I can’t exactly say Running Hurt is a bad read, because from a technical standpoint, it’s well written enough to be a quick and easy read. However, this one is the same as every other so-called rock star romance out there, with minor cosmetic variations, and it’s not a fantasy that I can buy without rolling my eyes. Hence, here’s a three-oogie score, given somewhat reluctantly because I was hoping for Mick Jagger here, only to get some boyband crap that think they are rock just because they have a stubble and some tattoos. Get out of here.
