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Billy Perkins is happy. He loves his smart 18-year-old son, Caleb, who’s about to graduate high school and is deciding where to attend college. He co-parents well with Caleb’s mom. He loves his job: he’s a music teacher who gets to work from home. He loves his home, an apartment above a music store in a bustling neighborhood of Baltimore. Life is good.
After father and son watch a music documentary that mentions a rock band called Burnt Flowers, Billy mentions he had a crush on the band’s drummer back in the day. Margot Hammer was talented and cool. Then Caleb gets a wild idea: he contacts Margot’s record company and concocts a scheme to get her down to Baltimore.
Margot, for her part, isn’t too happy. She lives alone in New York, long divorced from the father of her twenty-something daughter, Poppy. Her ex is a bona fide movie star with a string of love interests who keep getting younger. Now, the documentary that’s started running on Netflix calls her a recluse.
So when a woman from the record company contacts her and has a cool idea to get her some publicity, Margot takes a leap of faith and just goes for it. She travels to Baltimore and … finds out that the scheme one teenage boy came up with is not what she thought it was.
But she meets Billy and Caleb and sees the neighborhood. And she takes a chance. And then some more.
Charm City Rocks is a really sweet love story about two forty-somethings who could say their best days were behind them. Much like the many people following their romance through sightings posted online, I was rooting for them. I just loved the characters and this tale of what could seem a mismatch but is actually pretty perfect. I had no idea Baltimore was called Charm City, so that was a fun bit of info. And, yes, this book is chock-full of charm and music. (But it also ended up being full of profanity the further I read.)
Rated: High. Profanity includes 66 uses of strong language, around 115 instances of moderate profanity, about 30 uses of mild language, and 35 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes kissing, plenty of references to sex, some crude/vulgar talk, and sex scenes that are pretty much “off-screen.”
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
