ARC received via Netgalley for an honest review

I admit it - I am the president of the Fictional Band Groupie Slut Club - tell me there is a book about a rock star, and I am there ready to party.

I was excited to get into Taking The Lead - but for me, it just fell flat. There were just things that to me just felt unnecessary.

Axel just didn't feel the rock star to me. In the bedroom (or bathroom, or back seat of limo) he came across dom...ish, but other than that, he felt like a lovestruck teenager.

Rickanna - Ricki - just.. what? The terms of her employment/will were just weird. The big, bad secret sex club she runs with her sister just didn't feel at all necessary for the story, but we kept getting drawn back there. We never really find out why Ricki hates it so much, why it weirds her out.

At times (most the times, when she is not having sexy times) Ricki was just.... meh. She didn't stand out for me. I wanted to shake her to tell her to snap out of it, her flip-flopping with Axel, do I or don't I got a little tiresome for me.

I feel that there was just too many different storylines in the book - Ricki and Axel, Ricki's mother, the Hollywood movie scene - that is made everything feel a little glossed over. Perhaps some of these things could have been left for another book, or a novella to give us more details.

Now, all these things might just be me, and you might absolutely love these things about our MC's. It would be a boring world if we all liked the same things.

But for me, Taking The Lead just fell flat. I wanted to really like it, but instead I just liked it. The last 20% got better for me which saved it for me.

This is the first Cecelia Tan book I have read, and I will probably read the next book.