All Note Long by Annabeth Albert

Narrated by Brad King

Another deep dive into my Audible library to find titles I own but haven’t yet listened to turned up All Note Long, the third and final book in Annabeth Albert’s Perfect Harmony series, which is centred around characters involved with a TV singing/talent show. I reviewed book one, Treble Maker, when it came out in audio a couple of years back; I enjoyed it and picked up the other two books in the series, but unlike those – which feature characters who were contestants on the show – All Note Long focuses on country music star Michelin Moses, who was one of the judges and mentors.

Michelin (and right from that start, I had trouble with the name – I kept thinking of tyres!) was a pop star before he changed tack and moved into country music. Being gay in the country scene is a no-no, and he’s deeply in the closet, convinced coming out will mean the end of his career. When the story begins, he’s at a birthday celebration for one of his mentees, even though he knows his publicist and label would have kittens if they knew he’d met up with them at a gay bar. It’s a new experience for him, and he finds himself completely fascinated by one of the go-go dancers, a beautiful young Latinx guy who goes by Lucky. Michelin can’t help looking – even though he knows he shouldn’t – and decides to leave quietly soon afterwards, but he mistakes the way to the exit and ends up wandering the corridors backstage, where he bumps into Lucky, who notices he’s rather flustered and offers to get him some water.

There’s a definite and almost palpable frisson of attraction between the two men, and a conversation leads to a passionate kiss; but just after Lucky has agreed to meet Michelin later for something to eat, his alarm goes off, reminding him he should be back on stage. As he expresses his annoyance at letting himself get so distracted and bemoans his loss of earnings, Michelin clumsily offers him a couple of hundred bucks to make up the loss – an offer Lucky, understandably, takes completely the wrong way. Blowing up at Michelin and pointing out he’s not a whore, Lucky points the way to the exit and leaves Michelin to make his own way out.

He’s still fuming later when the club closes, but he soon discovers there’s a far bigger disaster on the horizon when one of his co-workers reveals that he witnessed – and recorded – what happened between Lucky and Michelin. Lucky is horrified at the thought of forcibly outing anyone – even if the guy had been a dick – and makes a deal that he thinks will keep the other dancer from going to the press. But alas. The guy takes the video to the media anyway.

The media frenzy over the outing of a major country music star is intense. Michelin had wanted to find a way to come out, but this certainly wasn’t it; now it’s a case of limiting the damage, and his publicist decides that the way to do that is to present Michelin and Lucky as a committed couple. Lucky is wary and initially reluctant to be involved with any such scheme, but when he can’t even get close to his apartment for the swarms of paparazzi surrounding it, he doesn’t have any other options. He agrees to be Michelin’s fake boyfriend for a few months – and makes it clear that there will be no repeats of the kissing, and no taking things any further while he’s effectively Michelin’s employee.

I enjoyed the story and the characters, who are fully-rounded with flaws and complexities that make them feel real – even if they’re sometimes frustrating! Michelin is quiet and introverted unless he’s holding his guitar, and he doesn’t want to be a trailblazer for a cause; he just wants to write and sing his music, and with the country music scene being so notoriously conservative, he doesn’t think he can be himself and have a career. Unlike Michelin, Lucky is out, proud and vivacious. He’s got the attitude, the skill and the talent to make it in the profession, but he’s still looking for his lucky (!) break; right now he’s working to earn enough money to make a professional video showcasing his talent in order to win a part in a Vegas show. Both men have been burned by past relationships and are understandably wary of risking their hearts again, but despite that and despite their differences in personality and outlook, their attraction to one another is impossible to ignore, and as they get to know each other, they begin to realise that they are exactly what the other needs. Michelin is lonely and longs for companionship; he needs someone to talk to and to bring him out of his shell, while Lucky needs someone to believe in him and to love him for everything that he is.

I liked the dynamic of their relationship for the most part, although they’re both overly stubborn in different ways and compromise doesn’t come easy to either of them. Lucky is talented and motivated, but he absolutely refuses to accept any help from Michelin when it comes to his career, or even to let him pay for dinner when they go out to eat. I could understand Lucky’s determination to succeed on his own merit and appreciated his integrity, but sometimes he comes dangerously close to cutting off his nose to spite his face. And then there’s Michelin’s decision to go along with what his record label wants and ride out the storm without making waves. Having initially backed his publicist’s idea to push the idea of Michelin and Lucky as a couple, Michelin is then told he can be gay provided he doesn’t do anything to bring people’s attention to it. To start with, he’s ready to go along with it, so be prepared to get angry, alongside Lucky, at the bigotry exhibited towards Michelin by promoters and radio stations and media who had previously been only too pleased to talk to him and play his music, and the stores who had been only too happy to make money by selling his music. This book was written in 2016, so not that long ago, and it makes my blood boil that there are places in the world where this kind of bigotry is not only tolerated but encouraged. /rant.

Michelin and Lucky have terrific chemistry, their romance is sweet and sexy, and their HEA is well-deserved and emotionally satisfying. Michelin’s demi-sexuality is sympathetically portrayed, and the journeys undertaken by both men – Michelin’s towards self-acceptance and comfort in his own skin, Lucky’s in learning how to balance his determination to live life on his own terms with allowing himself to be vulnerable – are compelling and very well done.

Brad King has narrated all three books in this series, and he delivers another enjoyable and expressive performance here. His gravelly baritone is a perfect fit for Michelin, who is generally softly spoken and a bit shy (the way he gets tongue-tied around Lucky to start with is so cute!), and the slight accent he adopts for Lucky (although I confess I can’t remember if it’s indicated in the text) is consistently maintained. The same is true of the accents adopted for a number of the secondary characters – DJs and people involved in the country music scene – and the female characters are portrayed appropriately by means of small changes in pitch and timbre. The narration is well-paced, clearly differentiated and strongly characterised throughout, and Mr. King really brings out the emotional connection between the two leads.

I enjoyed both story and narration All Note Long and am happy to recommend it. It’s the final book in the Perfect Harmony series, but it works perfectly well as a standalone – although the other two books are well worth listening to as well.

Caz

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