Mike and I are mildly obsessed with Tennessee,
specifically the area around Nashville and Murfreesboro. So when I saw
Jennifer Echol’s Dirty Little Secret on NetGalley, I pounced. Country
music (Mike hates it, I love it), Nashville, and
Jennifer Echols? Yes please! Tho to be fair I’m only 1 for 2 on
Echols, I loved Going Too Far, but couldn’t finish Forget You. Dirty
Little Secret lands somewhere in the middle.
Bailey and her sister Julie were raised on
bluegrass and country music, so when the talent scouts pick up Julie and
not Bailey, Bailey is jealous and bitter. She resents that they were
raised as a duo and now she’s being asked to disappear.
Nobody wants the public to know about the secret sister who was
ditched, so Bailey is supposed to stay home, stay quiet and above all
don’t play any music. Bailey has been moved in to live with her
grandfather while her sister kicks off her tour and has taken
a job playing music in the mall- some days she’s “Dolly Parton”’s
sidekick, some days she’s back up for “Merle Haggard.” It’s the sort of
job that flies under the radar and her parents aren’t aware of it.
Within a few days on the job tho, she meets Sam, a
talented guitar player with own band who is looking to make it
big in Nashville. Sam is convinced that what he needs to make it big is
Bailey and her fiddle. Sam is very persuasive and Bailey finds herself
playing a gig with his band, and not surprisingly,
they are good. Great, in fact. But is being in a really great band
worth risking her future, and possibly that of her sister?
I really enjoyed a lot of this one. I loved the
music scene and the Grand Old Opry and all of the technical music talk. I
loved Bailey herself and I came to love Julie as well. Bailey is hurt
and resentful, for good reason, but she progresses
as the book does, and comes to realize that maybe she’s overreacted
just a tiny bit. She learns to take risks that are for her future, as
opposed to risks that would damage her future. Those aspects of the book
are really well done.
Then there is Sam. Sam is completely manipulative,
as is stated over and over, and it’s really hard for both the reader and
Bailey to know what aspects are really his feelings and what things are
just what he’s saying to get what he wants.
Sam has exactly one focus in life- to get a contract- and he’s willing
to use any connection at all to get there. It’s hard to know if what he
feels for Bailey is real, or if she’s just another stepping stone. He is
slick, he gets all the adults to eat out
of his hand, he has his other band mates following his every lead, even
when they can tell he’s using them or Bailey. In the context of
Nashville and the music parts of the book,
this works very well. You can’t help but root for him to be
successful. In the context of a Sam and Bailey romance, however, I
never quite felt that he really had feeeeeeelings for her. I didn’t buy
into the happily ever after. The book ends on a high note,
but doesn’t tie up all the loose ends. It’s a satisfactory ending and
fits the rest of the book well, but I was really hoping for one that
would knock my socks off with the romantic tension as Going Too Far did.
It’s possible this will be that book for some
people, but all I saw was the (well done) manipulation. I suspect a
lot of people will love the ambiguity, but we all know that I’m in it
for the romance.
Have you read Dirty Little Secret? What did you think?
by Jennifer Echols back before the Read-A-Thon so forgive me if my review is brief. This one got great reviews all over the blogosphere and I was really excited about getting my hands on it. I think it really holds up to the hype and only have a few minor complaints.
by Anne Rivers Siddons is that I can perfectly imagine myself there, having gone to 
