Pause Time: [Blog Tour] Blessed Tragedy by H.B. Heinzer (Review + Giveaway)

Blessed Tragedy by H.B. Heinzer
Published March 14th, 2013
Blessed Tragedy #1
New Adult Contemporary Romance

Maddie Neumann died the day she pulled away from her parents' house determined to make her dreams come true. She wasn't the perfect little princess she'd been raised to be, all she wanted to do was rock. Everything Maddie was tucked away in a box to allow for her re-birth as Rain Maxwell; a badass rocker who answered to no one and lived by her own set of rules.

Rain's world is shattered with one phone call from her estranged family. No sooner does she get home than everything she thought she knew about her life starts changing.

Colton Bradford knew there was something special about Rain the moment they first met. Unfortunately, she had a hard and fast rule about dating a bandmate so he was stuck in the friends zone. When Rain is going through her own personal hell, will Colton finally be able to make her see how he feels and convince her to take a chance on love?

Available on Amazon

Review

My thoughts:

Due to explicit sexual content and language, I'd recommend this book for mature readers (+18).

Blessed Tragedy is the captivating story of Maddie Neumman -a normal and good girl raised to go to collage and have a normal job- and Rain Maxwell -a hardcore chick who is the lead singer of a rock band. The thing is, they're the same person. After graduation, Maddie decided to leave everything behind to pursue her dreams of having a music career and with that she broke her family's hearts. When her mothers dies, she has to come home and leave the only family she's known for the past five years -her band mates of Blessed Tragedy- to reconnect with the family she left behind all those years ago. Expecting to find the resentful stares she grown used to, she goes to say her last goodbyes to a mother who never understood her, but what's waiting for her is acceptance. The problem is... now that her family has come to terms with who Maddie is, can she accept herself? Does she even know who she is? On top of that, she's getting really close to his band mate, Colton, and even when she had sworn to herself she would never be involved with a band member in that way, she can't fight her feelings anymore and Colton has made clear that he feels the same way. Can the band survive the turmoil of emotions that this new relationship will bring?

Maddie is a complex character, she's going through so much that you feel inclined to forgive her outburst and childness but sometimes you just want to shake her -hard- and make her see that she's the one in the wrong. Colton is a little bit too unmanly and I'm not trying to say that man are not supposed to have feelings but he was a bit too emotional for my taste, so I couldn't fall for him as much as I would like. I really loved the rest of the band members and Maddie's brothers, the only thing that bother me a little was that their names were too similar (Matt, Mike, Mark) and I'm really REALLY bad with names, so that confused me to the point that I couldn't tell you who is who.

The romance in the novel was intense. If you're looking for a happy and healthy relationship, this book is not for you. There are a lot of issues, misunderstandings, hit-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of situations with this couple and sometimes you want to pull all your hair out because they're not making any sense. But even then, I really liked it, because it was an emotional roller coaster and it felt authentic, like a real life couple with problems and low points.

The writing wasn't flawless but it was good enough for me. I enjoyed Maddie's point of view and her voice was nice and fresh. However, I'm looking forward to the second book on this series to see thing from Colton's POV and get a little more insight on Blessed Tragedy as a band, because even when music seems to be a huge topic in the story, there wasn't enough of the band work (such as the writing process, lyrics and musical arrangements) as I would have liked.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down once I started it. I thik Blessed Tragedy is a great story about love, about coming to terms with who you really are and about forgiveness and acceptance of yourself and of the people you love.

Rating:

Some writers can tell you what book piqued their interest in writing a book of their own. I can’t. Other authors tell you the name of a teacher who influenced and encouraged them to write. The only English teacher I can remember probably does deserve some of the credit for my success because she was one of the hardest teachers I ever had. Honestly, I don’t know why I write; all I know is it’s one of two things I can do that makes me feel completely free.

The first “official” writing I did was as a fifteen year old high school sophomore. My dad was part of an APAzine and, for whatever reason, I started guest writing on his zine. That led to me getting a zine of my own in the Turbo Charged Party Animal APA. Rope the Moon (named after the John Michael Montgomery song and a nod to my dad’s influence on me) was the ramblings of a child in a world of adults.

I was held to a high standard because most of the contributors were my dad’s age. They were somewhat hesitant to allow a kid in, but they voted me in after those guest contributions. To this day, I feel blessed to consider some of those members friends.

Sometime after high school, life got in the way of my dreams. They keyboard was dusty. Looking back, that’s also when I felt my most restless. After my daughter was born, I started my first blog, More Than Mom, as a way to vent about my struggle to hold onto the identity I’d owned for 27 years.

In 2006, I heard about NaNoWriMo for the first time. I jumped in with the enthusiasm of anyone who’s never tried to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. It was a damn good story. Did I mention I’d never written anything of that length before? Yeah, that’s important because it means I never lost a work in progress of that length before. It was November 14th and I was over 24,000 words when my hard drive failed. And with the loss of my manuscript, I lost the drive to write for a while.

In 2012, I attempted NaNoWriMo again, this time saving in so many places I’m sure I’ll be finding partial copies of Bent everywhere until the day I die. The thing they don’t tell you with NaNo? When you hit 50,000 words, that doesn’t mean you’re done writing! So, I kept writing until I was done. And then I edited. And edited some more. Deleted a bunch of scenes, added others in. Had some trusted friends and mentors read it and then tweaked it some more.

In January 2013, I made the single scariest click of my mouse that I will ever make. I published Bent. It’s been a whirlwind year and it keeps picking up pace but I’ve never before felt so blessed to be where I am!

I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to email me at hbheinzer@gmail.com with questions, comments or even a good joke!