Lick

I read Lick on a plane, which is the right place for it. It is a rock star romance with a hangover, a Vegas wedding, and a heroine who wakes up with a diamond ring and no memory of saying yes. Kylie Scott published it in 2013, and it became the first book in the Stage Dive series. It is not a subtle novel. It is funny, fast, and very sure of what it is doing. Sometimes that is exactly what you want.

The morning after

Evelyn Thomas wakes on the bathroom floor of a Las Vegas hotel on her twenty-first birthday. Her head is pounding. A heavily tattooed stranger is being kind to her. She finds an enormous diamond ring on her finger and learns that she is married. Then she vomits. Then she discovers a tattoo on her skin that says David.

The stranger is David Ferris, lead guitarist for Stage Dive, a band so famous that the paparazzi are already waiting outside. Ev is an architecture student from Portland. She has a best friend named Lauren, a father who is protective and suspicious of musicians, and no memory of the night before. The premise is a classic rom-com setup, and Scott leans into it. The comedy comes from Ev's mortification and David's guardedness, and the chemistry comes from the fact that neither of them can quite believe what happened.

Lauren gets her out of the hotel and onto a plane. The paparazzi follow. Ev's architectural internship evaporates because her new boss does not want the attention. Her father is furious. David's security man, Sam, calls and offers to fly her to Los Angeles to sign divorce papers. Ev goes, against her father's wishes, because she wants to see the man she married and because she wants to know what she did.

The mansion

David lives in a grand Laurel Canyon house with his bandmates. Mal Ericson, the drummer, is the first to greet Ev, and he is the best character in the book. He is loud, loyal, and entirely without boundaries. Jimmy Ferris, David's older brother and the band's lead singer, is high when he corners Ev and insults her. David intervenes, nearly fights Jimmy, then drags Ev upstairs and accuses her of flirting with his brother. It is not his finest moment.

The band is the book's second family, and Scott has fun with it. Mal is the comic relief, but he is also the one who tells Ev the truth about David when everyone else is protecting him. Jimmy is the talented, self-destructive brother who has been the band's engine and its liability. Ben is the quiet bassist. The dynamics are familiar, but they are written with enough specificity to feel lived in. By the time the series moves on to Mal's book, you already know why he deserves one.

The mansion chapters also establish the class gap between Ev and David. She is a student with a car she saved for and a father who works for a living. He has security, lawyers, and a house that looks like a hotel. The book does not pretend the gap is easy. Ev's refusal of the settlement is the first time she insists on her own terms, and it sets the pattern for the rest of the novel.

The next morning, David's lawyers present annulment papers and a large settlement. The offer is generous and contemptuous at the same time. Ev throws the ring onto the papers, says she does not want his money, and walks out. Mal takes her to his beach house and explains that David has never wanted marriage, which means Ev must matter more than she thinks.

A compromising photo of Ev getting her tattoo leaks online. David comforts her and suggests they drive to his house in Monterey. On the way, he tells her about the night they met. Ev stood up for a cocktail waitress who was being bullied by his entourage. She treated him like a normal person. For a man who is used to being either adored or used, that was enough.

Monterey

The Monterey section is the honeymoon the couple never had. They kiss on the ocean rocks. They talk honestly. Ev admits she is not sure architecture is her calling. David admits that touring has worn him down. He has written his first two songs in years, both about her, and he asks her not to sign the annulment. She agrees.

The romance works because Scott gives them a real conversation. David is not just a brooding rock star. He is tired, and he is lonely, and he is trying to figure out whether the life he built is the life he wants. Ev is not just a plucky heroine. She is young, uncertain, and angry that her choices keep being made for her. The scene where they re-enact their wedding vows is silly and sweet, and it earns the ring going back on her finger.

Then the real world intrudes. A bar fight, a heated argument, a return to Los Angeles. Lauren reveals that David's high-school sweetheart cheated on him, and that the Monterey house was originally bought for that relationship. Ev starts to wonder whether she is a replacement or a rebound.

Martha

The reveal comes at a charity show. Ben, the bassist and Martha's brother, lets slip that Martha, David's personal assistant, is the ex-girlfriend. Ev kicks open the dressing-room door and finds Martha kissing David. David insists it means nothing, but he will not explain the matching earrings or why he kept the Monterey house. He warns that if she walks out, it is over. Ev takes off her shoes and leaves. Behind her, Jimmy collapses from an apparent overdose.

That is a lot of plot for one night, and it is the kind of operatic turn the genre runs on. Ev goes back to Portland and falls apart. Twenty-eight days pass. She works at a café, barely sleeps, and loses weight. David reappears with short hair and a beard, tracks her to a club, and they argue in a back alley before having desperate sex. Ev calls it goodbye. David refuses to accept it.

He brings pizza and gets punched by Ev's brother Nathan without defending himself. He follows her home every afternoon. On the fourth day, in an Irish bar, he tells the full truth. Martha was his childhood sweetheart. She cheated on him with Jimmy while the band was touring Europe. He kept her around out of obligation, not love. He says he loves Ev.

That night he texts her family revelations. His mother was an addict who abandoned them, and Jimmy had been paying her to stay quiet for years. He leaves a note saying he is still not leaving Portland. Martha visits and tells Ev that David has sold the Monterey house, bought a condo in Portland, and moved the band's recording to a local studio. He has never reorganized his life for anyone else.

The choice

Ev runs to the studio and reconciles with him. At dinner with her parents, she announces that she does not want to be an architect. It was her father's dream, not hers. She calls herself the luckiest woman in the world. She gives David a platinum wedding band bought with her car savings, and he vows never to remove it. She puts her studies on hold, works at the café and as David's assistant, and the band relocates to Portland. Jimmy gets sober. David plays her a new song at a local bar, and in the limousine she calls it a ten.

The ending is satisfying because it is about choosing a life, not just a man. Ev does not give up her ambition. She gives up a version of it that was never hers. David does not fix her. He makes room for her. That is a more adult resolution than the premise promises.

What works

The voice is the best thing in the book. Ev is funny, self-deprecating, and angry in a way that feels real. She is not a passive heroine. She leaves when she should leave, and she comes back when she has a reason. The banter with Lauren and Mal is sharp. The sex scenes are explicit and consensual, and the emotional beats land.

Scott also knows how to write a rock star without making him ridiculous. David is famous, but the fame is mostly a series of inconveniences: security, paparazzi, a brother who is falling apart, a past that will not stay buried. The band feels like a family, not a plot device. Mal is a scene-stealer, and it is no surprise he got his own book.

The Portland section is the part that surprised me. Ev goes home, gets a job at a café, and tries to rebuild without David. It would have been easy to write that as a montage. Scott gives it weight. Ev is tired, thinner, and not sure she made the right choice. When David follows her, he does not sweep her off her feet. He sits in her town, takes a punch from her brother, and waits. The patience is more romantic than any grand gesture.

Lauren deserves a mention too. She is the best friend who gets Ev out of Vegas, tells her the truth about the band, and keeps her grounded when the paparazzi arrive. She is not just a plot device. She has her own opinions about David, and some of them are right. The book's friendships are as important as its romance, which is one reason it has held up better than many rock star novels of its era.

The music scenes are also better than they need to be. David writes songs about Ev, and the book lets those songs be a form of communication when he cannot say the words. The charity show, the studio, the bar at the end: these are places where the characters can be honest without a conversation. For a romance, that is a useful trick.

What does not

The conflict is thin. Martha's kiss is a misunderstanding that could be cleared up in one conversation, and David's refusal to explain is a plot convenience. Jimmy's overdose is treated as a wake-up call and then mostly disappears. The twenty-eight-day separation is summarized rather than felt. The book is short, and it moves so fast that the emotional wounds heal faster than they should.

The instalove is also hard to swallow if you think about it. Ev and David have known each other for a matter of days, and the book wants us to believe in a lifelong commitment. The chemistry is there, but the foundation is not. Readers who need a slow burn will find this too quick.

The ending also wraps up too neatly. Jimmy gets sober, the band moves to Portland, Ev finds a new career, and everyone is happy. Real life does not resolve that fast, and the book knows it, but it chooses the genre promise over the mess. I did not mind. I just would not call it realistic.

Should you read it

Read it if you like rock star romance, forced proximity, and a heroine who says what she thinks. Read it if you want something fast and fun for a flight or a rainy afternoon. Read it if you are planning to continue the series, because Stage Dive is one of the better rock romance series of its era. Mal alone is worth the price of admission.

Do not read it if you want realism, a long courtship, or a plot without a convenient misunderstanding. It is a genre pleasure, and it delivers those pleasures efficiently. I finished it in one sitting and immediately looked up the next book. That is the review.