Impossible Things

Star Shadow Series, Book 2

By: Beth Bolden

Narrated by: Kirt Graves

For the last 10 years, Benji and Diego have not only been members of Star Shadow, one of the biggest boy bands in the world, but best friends. During the years of fame and fortune they've also held a front row seat to the callous cruelty of the music industry. As much as they've both wanted more from their relationship, it never felt worth it to trade what they have for something hot, heady and completely impossible.

But is it really?

After welcoming back their long lost member and making it through their reunion tour with a new lease on fame, life suddenly seems too short to continue settling for safety.

Benji and Diego could have everything they've ever wanted, but can they figure out how to choose each other? Despite every impossible thing the world intends to throw at them?

It's never the end...it's only the beginning.

Contains mature themes.

©2019 Beth Bolden (P)2019 Tantor

Love musician stories!! 💕💕

This is the 2nd book in the series and though not as raw as the first it was still a good story. Two more band members who were friends first find they can’t fight their attraction. Both were previously married to women but are now divorced. Through the music, broken careers and longstanding friendship these two find their HEA.

Everything!

This series is amazing. Both stories threw me through emotions. I highly recommend the listen. I hope one day Hazardous Things gets released on audible. I would love to know what happens between Felix and Max. I might actually have to read that one. Just amazing all in all.

Not buying the single.

Have you been longing for story that is filled with tremendous longing and a decade of missed opportunities that limps along with uneven characters, predictable plot points in a setting that couldn't be more preposterous? Me neither.

The first installment, Terrible Things, has the right elements for a successful book. A sympathetic pair of main characters literally torn apart and in need of 280 pages to be brought back together. Supported by their friends/bandmates, Caleb and Leo find their way back. But there is a second and third story planned by Bolden. She makes sure we know that there are two more couples to come in the future. Those things aside, the first book is fine.

Impossible Things starts between the end of the first book and it's epilogue. Let's take one minute for the premise. Book One dealt with the fallout that Leo and Caleb endured from being forced into the closet by the band's label. This book deals with Benji and Diego's ten years of secret longing for each other while feeling forced to make an impossible choice. This time it is Benji's representative that puts pressure on the couple. And the band? Well the band - if the boys make it - will be comprised of two MM couples and a drummer. A drummer who not so secretly longs for Leo's little brother. That is book three, not on audio, but it exists.

Setting aside the suspension of disbelief for the idea that all 5 members of this group are in/will be in MM relationship, let's instead focus on Benji and Diego, and a bit of Leo. And Leo's brother Felix.

Almost from the beginning, I felt book two was a go or get off the pot story. The amount of angst over "what to do" is incredible. Bolden's fix to have Benji's agent be a complete monster! He is such a cartoon that you know immediately what is going to happen, and I mean immediately. Our first introduction to him is when he tells our boy Ben that he has to up his trend numbers so Benji better start a fake relationship with a famous model. Or he can be out with Diego as long as Diego's daughter is part of the equation. "Benji, you're third behind Leo and Caleb - is that where you want to be?" The only thing missing is for the agent to talk like a gangster and have a stubby cigar. Benji actually wrings his hands. Where is the kind, supportive guy from book one?

Benji, as we find out in this book is incredibly driven and cannot let himself rest - he must overcome any failure and achieve all his dreams. He is powerless to his own ambition. Hence the over the top agent he signed after the band broke up five years earlier. There is Deigo, the brilliant musician who only reluctantly became part of a pop boy band to be closer to the guy he never gets. He wants to right the failings of Benji's past, so he re-imagines one of Benji's songs from a failed solo album only too have Benji shoot it down. Don't forget that song! What has Diego done over the ten years? Five years of stardom until the break up. After the band breaks up, he marries a woman, has a child, then she divorces him when she realizes she's completing with his desire for Benji. In retaliation, Benji marries a woman, and that marriage also collapses. This is all discussed in the first book. It is also discussed a whole lot in the second book. It also makes no sense. Diego admits to basically being a virgin when he married at 20. Benji isn't that much different. I want to know in what world, when a guy is desperate for another guy that his resolution is to marry a woman?

Then there's sweet Leo. Our formerly heartbroken sweetheart from book one, is now a pest/jerk in this book. I really hate when characters are changed from one book to the next so they can cover a needed role. And Felix? The younger bother is hired by the band as their liaison/manager to represent their interests, even though he has no experience. While described over and over as someone so smart and crafty he could be in the CIA, he completely screws up his first real test as said manager/liasion, and the band just shrugs off his failure. Why? Well, the author needed the crisis to happen, and Felix is going to get with Max in book three - they can't get mad at him.

Remember that wife who left Diego? She was supportive of him living his life until confronted with it, sending Diego into a "tail between his legs" guy, living in fear of what she could do. Benji won't tell Diego anything of the pressure from the agent. It is highly predictable - including how they are pulled back together. But the real issue is that ten years of longing and misery isn't enough to propel them out of the closet willingly, they're ok trying to keep on the DL while they "figure things out".

Regardless of all the 5 star reviews flung at this book, it has a simpering plot, sluggish timing and isn't that interesting. Even Kirt Grave's narration is a bumbling and slow, further drowning the book. I cannot muster a recommend for the title. Let the story be finished with book one - the more successful endeavor.