Face the Music

Title & buy link: Face the Music
Author: Dany Sirene
Cover Artist: Catt Ford
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Genre: M/M time travel, historical and contemporary
Length: Novella (60 pages)
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

A guest review by Leslie S

Review summary: Short, fun read that didn’t totally live up to its potential but was enjoyable nonetheless.

Blurb
Tyler thinks making out on stage with his bandmate is just a publicity stunt—until his father cancels his allowance and he’s forced to take a real job. Working in a record store feels plebian enough, but when Tyler wakes up nearly twenty years in the past, he finds that working in that same record store seventeen years ago is a whole different scene. His one bright spot is a chance to be in a band with a guy named Dylan—but Dylan’s problems with the 1995 music scene aren’t the only obstacles in their way.

Review
This book is part of the Dreamspinner Press Daily Dose series ‘Time Is Eternity’, which deals with time travel. Instead of travelling back to the Roman period or the Viking period or to the Renaissance, like the book Sirius reviewed last week, this one deals with the much more recent past – 1995. Now I have very fond memories of 1995 (I was in my final year at university, so you can work out how old I am :lol:) and like many people of my advanced years I think of those times as being just like yesterday…

Our hero Tyler is 19 and the singer in a band that’s struggling to break free of the pub-and-club circuit. During a gig in which only a dozen or so people turn up, the guitarist Chris grabs Tyler on stage and kisses him. Tyler’s surprised, but Chris says it’ll provoke a reaction – and it does, when a video of the kiss is uploaded to YouTube and Tyler gets into a whole heap of trouble from his dad. Tyler tries to defend himself, but his dad cuts his allowance and Tyler has to take a job in a music shop. He rants to his colleague Larry that no one makes good music anymore (I loved this scene, having once been very into the Sisters of Mercy etc myself), but instead of giving him sympathy and solidarity, Larry is just amused.

Feeling sorry for himself, Tyler goes home… and wakes up in 1995. His life is intact, complete with his parents and home, though his life has relocated from Ontario to Chicago. Tyler is understandably shocked, but discovers that in this alternate reality he also works in a music shop – where his colleague is ordering Rammstein’s first album Herzeleid (and as a former R+ fan I was beyond tickled by this scene!). Later on, a guy comes into the shop with some flyers. His band, Mourning Blue, is auditioning for a vocalist. Tyler grabs his chance and goes along to the audition, but before he can even start singing, the guitarist, Dylan, tells him not to bother.

The two other band members, Eric and Josh, explain that Dylan – who also writes the songs – is a bit moody because their former vocalist Mark has ‘left’. Dylan and Mark were lovers. Even when Tyler eventually sings for the group, Dylan still says no. Tyler is disheartened but the next day, Dylan comes into the music shop to apologise and to offer Tyler the position as lead singer.

The two guys become close, and Tyler tells Dylan that he’s from the future. Dylan is intrigued and he also fancies Tyler, and after a night out at a goth bar, Dylan takes Tyler back to his place – and Tyler discovers some of the truth about Mark.

The road to love never runs smooth, of course, and neither does the road to fame. Tyler must deal with all kinds of emotional fall-out and he must decide between stardom and selling out – all before the clock ticks forward and sends him back to 2012!

This is a fun little story that gave me a lot of laughs, mainly because of my age, and it is genuinely funny to think back to the days before iPods and Google and Facebook, when everyone wore high-waisted blue jeans and used cassette players and watched Friends religiously. Tyler’s voice is funny and sarcastic, and I thought the author did a great job at using his character to bring out the humour of the time travel part of the story.

What didn’t work so well for me was the romance aspect. Dylan is quite a closed-off character (which is understandable, with what he’s experienced), but I never really warmed up to him. There’s not a HEA but there’s the potential for a future for the two characters, which I thought was a fitting way to end the story. Overall, though, I felt there needed to be more of an emotional connection and that aspect lost out to the humour.

There’s no attempt made to explain the hows and whys of the time travel – and that doesn’t bother me – but it felt like this could have been a longer story. There are a couple of plot strands that could have done with being teased out some more, because in places the story felt a little thin, and then it ended and I was a little disappointed.

However, I really did enjoy the humour and the author has a fun voice, so if you’re looking for something a bit frothy and light-hearted to while away an hour, this could be for you.