Book Title: Rifts and Refrains
Author: Devney Perry
Series: Hush Note, Book 2
Rating: 5⭐
Release Date: September 29th, 2020
Synopsis: The second in a series about a band, Rifts and Refrains follows Quinn Montgomery coming back to her Montana hometown after the death of a family member. She’s been away for nine years and now she’s back, facing all of her history and the people she left behind. Including the boy that she loves, only to see the man that he has become.
Review: This is my second Devney Perry book and I also came into this series not knowing anything about Jonas, since I didn’t read the first book. But you get a sense of the band dynamics right from the first page of Rifts and Refrains. The book tosses you right into the heart of the music and the band and you see these characters evolve slowly. Each book in the series focuses on one member of the band Hush Note and is written by different authors. While they are part of a series, they still work as stand-alones and can be read without knowing the details of the other books. However, as someone who didn’t read the first one, I would definitely recommend getting that and getting a crash course into the lives of these band members before you dive into Quinn’s life.
“Quinn Montgomery had always been destined for greatness. It was in her soul and it came out through her music. Quinn’s music was this enormous, living, untamable beast that she’d unleashed upon the world. But it shined especially bright when she was singing.”
Small town romance meets second chance romance meets rockstar romance meets lovers to enemies to lovers. That’s how I’d classify this fantastic book. Devney Perry snags your attention from the minute you meet Quinn and you can’t take your eyes off of her. It’s clear that she’s holding onto so much and you can sense and feel that tension rippling off of her. Quinn is considered a legend in the music world. She’s an extraordinary drummer who has won awards, met her legendary heroes and she’s made a name for herself. She likes hiding behind her drum kit and building the rhythm into the hearts and souls of everyone who comes out to hear the band play. And she does it so damn well too.
The book kicks off with a devastating phone call that shakes Quinn up. But she pushes through the gig and then is on a plane to her hometown in Montana to pay respects to her beloved grandmother. Quinn’s been gone for nine years, and in all that time, the only person she ever spoke to was her grandmother. As for why she left? That’s peppered across the book as she reconnects with everyone from her parents to her siblings to neighbours and old friends. But most of all, when she reconnects with Graham Hayes, her childhood sweetheart.
“In our years apart, I hadn’t forgotten that smooth, sultry sound. It was a siren’s call, alluring and charming. Irritating.”
Rifts and Refrains is so angsty! There’s so much unsaid between Quinn and Graham, but also between Quinn and her family. And all of that just keeps building up into something so delicious tense that you’re constantly waiting for someone to explode. Everyone is dealing with so much with the loss of Nan – the woman Quinn and almost everyone considered a grandmother – and then add to that Quinn coming home after so many years and there’s not a single family scene that is free of tension. On the flip side, Quinn has such an incredible relationship with her bandmates and to see that happening alongside all of the tension at home is quite stark.
Graham and Quinn are such brilliant characters. In my short Devney Perry experience, that’s something I’ve noticed – she writes such beautiful characters and she digs deep into them to deliver the best kind of story you deserve. They’ve got their hurts and their pain and they’re not dealing with it properly. And every interaction just tips that tension to the next level till you’re afraid that something bad is going to happen. I love that even though Quinn and Graham want each other, they know what happens when Quinn leaves. They’ve accepted this and they understand just how complicated things would be. Which only makes you want them to get together even more.
“We’d been lovers once, but this was beyond any teenage fantasies. This was sensual. Carnal. I wanted her voice in my bedroom, whispering dirty musings in my ear as her blond hair draped across my bare chest. I wanted those fingers to tickle and torment the lines of my stomach like they did the piano’s keys.”
I am a sucker for rockstar romances, but I didn’t expect something so beautiful going into Rifts and Refrains and I cannot recommend this enough, because if you’ve never read Devney Perry before, this book will make you dig through her backlist and read everything else right away; I know I’m going to do that right now!
Thanks to Devney Perry and Valentine PR for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
anna reads here 
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