Enthralling and entertaining. Hard to put down.
Many thanks to El Marko Books and to NetGalley for pyme with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Beatrice Ball loves to sing. She loves it more than anything. When she's not singing she feels empty at best and, because it means dealing with her controlling mother, angry at worst. Beatrice begins to sneak out at night in order to sing incognito. But one night something happens and she wakes up in a hospital ER and learns that her good friend has been murdered.

Beatrice has been famous - a household name - practically since the day she was born. With suspicion on her now, her mom hires one of the top attorneys in the country to represent her. This elevates her fame to a whole new level and Beatrice experiences the strange world of the ultra famous Hollywood celebrity. But she can't just live in the circle she's currently in. She either has to keep climbing or suffer a devastating fall from grace.

There really isn't much to say about this book. It's quite poorly written and not worth reading. The characters don't stand out in any way. We never believe Beatrice Ball is worthy of any sort of attention. She never shows us anything, but author G.E.Butler tells us she's talented and famous.

The story itself is pointless. If we don't care about the characters (and we don't) then why should we care what happens to them? Hint: we don't.

The book seems to glorify celebrity while trying to tell the reader that celebrity has its own poison and isn't all its cracked up to be and that there may be other forces at work behind the scenes (yes, we have to get a little conspiratorial here - note some of the symbols on the cover).

I should also point out that the book has an almost excited, infantile attitude toward sex, with the assumption that music celebrity comes with a free pass to perform sex acts on and off the stage. There is also a pretty vile rape scene included in the book.

I requested this because I'm always on the look out for books that use music in its theme or storytelling, but I'm definitely singing no praises for this one.

Looking for a good book? Skip this and look for another.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I am in awe of the complexity of the characterization and plotting of In Soul'd Out. All threads lead out and, eventually, all lead back in. We see varied characters at stages in their lives and development in great detail. We know why luxury is important to Tammy—why God is important to Elie—why Mezziah is motivated to success and not overly bothered with ethics. There are so many examples that I could give potential readers, but all of them feel spoilerish because this is an author where just about everything is relative to the advancing story line There are few wasted scenes.

In a lot of cases, the narrative in In Soul'd Out is disturbingly graphic. The opening scenes involve a party highlighting the worst of Hollywood excess. Sex and drug use is graphic and perhaps a little shocking, but not gratuitous. Most of what happened in that scene ties into the story line in a meaningful way. Our first exposure to the hedonistic lifestyle is also Beatrice’s. In putting the character and the audience in that situation together, we know that Bea is an average girl who got into a situation over her head because, like us, she never imagined this world was out there. In another scene, a child who has been living in a bank of cages with other children and animals with just enough room to lie on her back, witnesses a newborn being put in a hot oven and baked. These scenes are well spaced and, as stated, not gratuitous but hard to read. So hard to read. When given that child’s back story, the reader really thinks about missing children in America and the thought weighs on the soul, but isn’t that the point of good literature? To make the reader think?

I don’t know the music industry, so I couldn’t say if varied characters are based on real people in the industry. Some of the things that Vanessa did recalled were stories read in tabloids about Brittany Spears. Vanessa was extreme. If Brittany suffered a quarter of the dysfunction that Vanessa does in the story line, she could be forgiven for going off the rails as she did. Vanessa was a pawn to be directed and discarded at the will of the person running the show.

Soul'd Out is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t mind graphic descriptions and grit, this is a great story–well written and expertly crafted. Despite the copious amount of back story, the novel flowed and, at the end, all tied together. Normally, I would suggest it for fans of a certain author, but if this novel has a peer, I haven’t read it.

This book wasn't very well written and was not very engaging. I had a heart time getting through it.