Gracie & Zeus Live the Dream

By: Elizabeth Roderick

Narrated by: Ivy Tara Blair

Grace Morgan has been on the music scene long enough to know the life of sex, drugs, and rock & roll is just a dream. But after a messy divorce, Grace wants to give her dream of being a music journalist one last shot.

She moves to LA with her 21-year-old foster son, Zeus. They live in a motel on cup noodles and hope, until Grace finally gets a break: a story about Inez Carter, hot-mess frontwoman of the popular band Karma Korn.

The story delivers more sex, drugs, and rock & roll than Grace bargained for. Karma Korn's drummer, Nelson, has Grace rethinking her post-divorce vow of celibacy. And after they're invited to an elite Hollywood rave, where they mistakenly drink the electric Kool-Aid, Zeus is scouted to be the lead guitarist for another star band.

However, the story soon goes sideways, and things aren't adding up. Someone is spreading rumors about Grace, trying to sabotage her career and reputation. Then someone tries to kill her. Grace is left frantically trying to connect the dots in the dwindling hope she'll be able to salvage the story, her relationship with Nelson, and her life.

©2020 Elizabeth Roderick (P)2021 Ivy Tara Blair

Cozy romantic mystery for fans of music and musici

Elizabeth Roderick’s Gracie & Zeus Live The Dream is a well-written, captivating, and entertaining cozy romantic mystery novel filled with unique characters, interesting situations, and driven by a compelling plot.

The author draws from her experience as a musician and songwriter in order to create believable scenarios and lifelike protagonists Gracie & Zeus are both troubled characters, each with their own quirks and problems, and with time they started to really grow on me.

Gracie gives a last chance to her dream of becoming a successful music journalist and takes Zeus – the adopted son – with her in what is to become the adventure of their lives. Of course, they are getting into much more than they bargained for as kidnapping, attempted murder, sex, and many other things will combine and collide in this roller coaster of a wild ride set against the backdrop of Los Angeles’ wildly popular music scene.

Audiobook narrator, producer, and musician Ivy Tara Blair delivers a balanced performance and manages to bring all the characters in Gracie & Zeus Live The Dream to life in this excellent audio production. She reads in a pleasant, calm, and soothing voice while keeping a fast pace, infusing the narrative with joy and emotion at just the right moment. Although she doesn’t assign different voices or wild accents to the dialogs, I think that she did a great job with this narration.

So, if you are in the mood for a cozy mystery with a touch of romance and influenced by music and musicians, you should definitely check out Gracie & Zeus Live The Dream, both Elizabeth Roderick and Ivy Tara Blair are very talented and it’s clear that this was a labor of love for all involved in it.

Great mystery

A good mystery that kept me guessing all the way up until the final reveal. The relationship between Gracie and Zeus can at times feel a bit idealized, but Roderick otherwise does an excellent job of writing characters and their relationships in a way that feels very natural and realistic. Blaire does a good job as narrator here, doing an excellent job of conveying characters’ emotions in voices, while distinctly hers, still all feel unique and recognizable whenever they speak. If I could offer a small criticism, I thought the wrap up at the end felt a bit rushed, and I wish there had been a couple more hints toward the hacking twist, if the author had wanted it the mystery to be solvable by the reader. I don’t normally read this genre, but I quite enjoyed the experience.