Thank you NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the chance to read and review ‘The Music Was Just Getting Good’ by Alicia Cook.
The Music Was Just Getting Good is Alicia Cook’s fourth and final installation in her mixtape series. She does seem to have her devotees; her books average around 3.9 stars on Goodreads, based on 600 to 5300+ reviews. Those who like her style, will like her style. This last book comes out on the 9th of January, is 242 pages long, and like the others in the series is published by Andrews McMeel. The book is not available on Kindle Unlimited, and the kindle version is priced around $8.49.
The style of the series is interesting; the book is divided into two sides. Side A has 91 poems, none of which have a title but are called Track 1, Track 2 and so on. Each of these "tracks" is accompanied with a song, which is an interesting way to read these poems. The second half of the book, called 'Side B', is a series of blackout poems based on the original 91 tracks. However, in this second half, each of the poems has different songs than the first.
To be clear, I absolutely love Track 27 and I think Alicia Cook has some real gems in this collection. I understand why her fans love her.
That being said, I believe that this collection needed to be edited significantly.
91 poems and then 91 blackout poems don’t seem to be a lot and then you open the book and they become a lot, especially when the same couple of themes are repeated again and again. Had the author halved the number of poems, the remaining ones would have been given the ability to shine individually instead of being lost in this sea of tracks instead of letting things become repetitive.