Book Review: Long Songs & Other Lies by Jessica Pennington

Love Songs & Other Lies

Author: Jessica Pennington
Publisher: Tor Teen (April 24, 2018)
Hardcover, 288 pages
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Summary
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.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Review
Love Songs & Other Lies is really interesting in that it's told in dual POV and also dual timelines. It was really interesting because I kept reading the NOW chapters and wondering what the THEN chapters would reveal to bring them to the NOW state of affairs. It's almost like you get two romance stories in one! The THEN chapters tell the story of Vee and Cam meeting and falling for each other (or whatever) in their senior year of high school, and the NOW chapters take place a few years later when they meet up again and tell their second chance romance story. 

At times the timeline got a little confusing, but surpisingly not because of the dual storylines/timelines. The NOW storyline has a battle of the bands set up and sometimes it was worded in such a way that made it seem like a lot of time had passed, but also at the same time like only a day or two had passed, so I was kind of confused as to the actual time flow. Maybe I was just reading too fast trying to devour the entire book in one big swallow and misunderstood something? 

With all the lying on the beach at night that Vee does, Love Songs & Other Lies is pretty much the perfect summer beach read romance. I REALLY want to gush about a few of my favorite moments, but I don't want to spoil anything, so suffice it to say that this book had me making gasping and making cartoon heart eyes at it several times. And I LOVED the ending, which I did NOT see coming at all and was totally drop-kicked in the face by - if one can be drop-kicked in the face in a good way.