Bookish

 HOLD ME DOWN

By Clea Simon

This is NOT the usual cats-n-cosies mystery we've come to expect from this author. In this novel of women's suspense, an aging rock star’s gig at her old band-mate’s memorial service-slash-benefit-concert brings back familiar faces and fractured memories of life on the road. 

The past is at once poignant and unapologetically raw, raucous, and raunchy. Concerts and parties, long blurred into a drug-and-booze-filled kaleidoscope, begin to come back into focus. This book could be a straightforward trip down a fictional Memory Lane but it’s so much more: an interrogation of celebrity-worship, the music industry, the fractal nature of memory and the essential question of whether we’re really who we think we are.

When one of those old familiar faces is found dead outside the concert venue, the suspense, uncertainty, and mutual distrust rise along with Gal’s growing collection of returning memories and nightmares. Her inner vulnerability pulls the reader in early as she maneuvers through the crowd and later the financial and legal tasks needed to set up a trust for Aimiee’s daughter. Amid the police investigation and her own groping for some shreds of reliable truth, she must interrogate her memories of every event, every individual encountered during the band’s chaotic rise and sudden collapse. We’re right there in her claustrophobic motel room with the nightmares, walking through the midnight streets when she can’t sleep. Questioning everything.

This novel slides between past and present like a well-constructed concert set shifts on a single note from driving rock lyrics to soulful ballads of lost love and friendships gone wrong. The tension tightens mercilessly until we’re no longer sure whose word to trust over anything.

 I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

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