Review: Love Songs & Other Lies by Jessica Pennington

Book Blurb:

Love Songs & Other Lies by Jessica Pennington

Publisher: Tor Teen

Release Date: April 24th, 2018

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

It’s summer romance and second chances, the songs that stay in your head, and the boy you’ll never forget.

Two years after rock-song-worthy heartbreak, Virginia Miller is looking forward to a fun, carefree summer. Her friends just landed a spot on a battling bands reality show, and Vee is joining them for her dream internship on tour. Three months with future rockstars seems like an epic summer plan. Until she learns she’ll also be sharing the bus with Cam. Her first love, and her first heartbreak. Now Vee has more than just cameras to dodge, and Cam’s determination to win her forgiveness is causing TMZ-worthy problems for both of them. With cameras rolling, she’ll have to decide if her favorite breakup anthem deserves a new ending. And if she’s brave enough to expose her own secrets to keep Cam’s under wraps.

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My Review:

5 Out Of 5 Stars

Genre: Heart, Heart-Wrenching, Romance, Teen--

V loves music and managing her best friend's band, but never expected to ever be fearless enough to play her music in public- until a boy gives her hope. Cameron escaped his past, trying to forget the tragedy that is his life with a new start in a small town that does not know anything about him. He never expected to meet someone like V, someone so full of life who could almost make him forget- someone he could never deserve. When a music competition almost two years later thrusts the two together again, they need to determine what love means and what they will do about it.

Jessica was able to rip my heart out with her words. I knew this was not going to be a super happy upbeat book, but in reality I feel completely devastated while at the same time I would not change anything about the book. It was romantic, angsty, depressing, redeeming, stressful and wonderful.

Told through now and then timelines through both the main character's points of view, you get to see how everything wonderful began and unraveled, every sweet, painful moment that made me just want to melt. This is my first book by Jessica, actually her first book in general, but if this is what she writes like then I will read whatever she writes next.

I am not sure how I am suppose to overcome this book hangover, but while I figure that out here are my top 10 favorite quotes from the book. I highly recommend Love Songs for everyone who loves emotional YA contemporary romances.

Top Ten Favorite Quotes

1. “There are stipulations to kissing you? Like, you have demands?”

“Just one.”

My hands settle on my hips. “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

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2.“Gross. I think you mean ‘man candy,’ because I’ve never seen your man meat. And I don’t plan to.”

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3. Cam is smiling at me like I’m absolute perfection, and for a moment I forget all about the pain and the hate and the anger. I smile back. And for one moment, I truly feel happy, ignited by the way he’s looking at me, like I’ve cured cancer or written the Great American Novel, not scribbled a couple of stupid songs. I’m seventeen again, sitting at the beach after sunset, playing a concert for two.

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4.“I want you to say yes. To everything. To anything.”

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5. "Sometimes you don't know what you want until you just do. It hits you like a wave, knocks you underwater, and when you surface, all you want is this one thing. It's like gasping for air."

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6.“You were the missing lyrics to a song I didn't even know I was writing.”

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7.“I always joked about you stalking me, but really”—she’s trying not to smile and failing—“at a nursing home?”

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8.A glorified groupie along for the ride. Maybe hopping on a bus based on a too-good-to-be-true job offer from Logan wasn’t my best choice ever. Who knew, right?

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9. “Oh, yeah, laugh it up. One person wears flannel, okay. Fine. But all of you show up in flannel, and you look like those freaking animatronic bears from Disney World who play banjos and wear suspenders and scare the kids.”

“So yes, I’m checking your clothes. Because I love you. And because I—not you—get blamed when you show up looking like you should be carrying fiddles and washboards.”

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10. “I’d like to hear this idea,” Nonni says, and I officially love her.