Solo (audiobook)

My thoughts:

After unsuccessfully trying to listen to several audiobooks that are part of the weekly paired audiobooks offered free by SYNC Audiobooks for teens, and just as I was going to opt out of their emails, this book in verse read by the author caught my attention. This is a great guy book if they are interested in music and poetry and family secrets and rock and roll. 

What really appealed to me was the way the author read his own work. Only authors know how they want their piece to sound and as a reader, I appreciate hearing poets like Jacqueline Woodson (Feathers, Locomotion, Brown Girl Dreaming) and Kwame Alexander read because they have a definite rhythm to their work that is musical and haunting. 

One thing the audiobook has that is not in print is the music and performance of the songs. For a stark look at contemporary issues and for the musicality, this is a must listen. I take back my opinion on audiobooks. This one must be listened to. 

Description:

Blade never asked for a life of the rich and famous. In fact, he’d give anything not to be the son of Rutherford Morrison, a washed-up rock star and drug addict with delusions of a comeback. Or to no longer be part of a family known most for lost potential, failure, and tragedy, including the loss of his mother. The one true light is his girlfriend, Chapel, but her parents have forbidden their relationship, assuming Blade will become just like his father.

In reality, the only thing Blade and Rutherford have in common is the music that lives inside them. And songwriting is all Blade has left after Rutherford, while drunk, crashes his high school graduation speech and effectively rips Chapel away forever. But when a long-held family secret comes to light, the music disappears. In its place is a letter, one that could bring Blade the freedom and love he’s been searching for, or leave him feeling even more adrift.

Last words:

But most of all/I sing for myself, the spider,/I'm finally ready to face./ I play the song inside that's been waiting for me to listen,/the one I'm finally ready to hear.

Since this is an audiobook, I do not know where the line breaks are. The line breaks are just my best guess based on my reading. If this is not correct, I sincerely apologize since I was not reading the print version.