Music of the Soul by Erik Schubach

This is a story about the power of love and how even the baddest among us can change...if they want to.

In a nutshell: Bada** rocker chick who drinks excessively and sleeps around and parties realizes her life sucks. Meeting Anabella makes her want to be a better person. But can she? After all, she just runs away, right back into that lifestyle as soon as the going gets tough.

I had a love/hate thing going with the heroine of this book. I didn't like her much at all until the last quarter when the book suddenly slapped me in the face and I realized what the theme was...bear with me here. I didn't like how Mandy runs away from Bella, leaves her to pick up the pieces, tosses her daughter in the arms of a nanny, and then proceeds to thrive on all their text messages and voice mails and daises, expecting them to love her, but not giving back. Not even picking up the phone to talk to them, but yet expecting them to call..etc.

I didn't like this chick at all. In my eyes, she didn't care enough about Bella to even keep up to date on the news.

And that is when the book shocked the heck out of me. Just when I was cursing Mandy for the upteenth time, I realized...while they were loving and supporting Mandy from afar, she, in turn, in rocker-girl-reformed-style, was also loving and supporting them.

And that is when I finally "got" it.

Love and support comes in many forms. Love can motivate the hardest of souls to change for the better. People can change if they want to. Sometimes it just takes a nudge or in this case, a kind smile and a sweet voice. And guess what!! I've known this, but apparently a lot of romance authors don't...you don't have to have sex with someone to realize you love them! *GASP* Call the Enquirer!

I was interested in this book because the love interest, Bella, is deaf. I am disappointed that she wasn't really IN the entire middle of the story, only the beginning and end, in person anyway. Throughout most of it, Many is loving her from afar. However, I appreciated the tidbits and looks into Bella's life of deafness. I love how she trained herself to sing, to speak in a nice tone, etc. I actually found it very plausible. As a deaf person, I'm fully aware of how self-conscious we are about how we sound. It does take some training. I appreciated this story line very much.

And I'd be a good-for-nothing editor if I didn't notice the punctuation errors and stuff, so I'm going to mention that, and I'm giving this book four bikes. Thank you, Mr. Schubach, for the important messages within these pages. We should all strive to be like Bella and Mandy.