Review: What You Do To Me by Rochelle B. Weinstein

What You Do To Me by Rochelle B. Weinstein

Blurb from Goodreads:

From the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends comes a moving novel of two unfinished love stories and the music and lyrics that bring them together.

Journalist Cecilia James is a sucker for a love song. So when she stumbles across a clue to the identity of the muse for one of rock’s greatest, she devotes herself to uncovering the truth, even as her own relationship is falling apart.

While writing an article for Rolling Stone, Cecilia works to reveal the mystery that has intrigued fans and discovers a classic tale of two soulmates separated by fate and circumstance. Rock star Eddie Vee once sang with his soul, dedicating love songs to Sara Friedman, his inspiration and first love. Now, Eddie takes refuge in anonymity, closed off to the past. Sara, too, has distanced herself from their love, moving thousands of miles away to live the life she once railed against. As Eddie and Sara tentatively open up to Cecilia about broken dreams, she struggles to give them a happy ending. In the process, she learns that broken hearts can be healed—even her own.

What You Do To Me is the story of a love song and of the triumph of the heart over the greatest of odds. Even for those who have written off love forever.

 I thought this was going to be one thing and it was completely another -- it actually reminded me a lot of Jackie Collins or Judith Krantz, but missed the mark a bit. It was sort of like an 80s epic a la those authors (maybe fitting since part of it is set in/around 1979) but I didn't love it.  I found a lot of it to be trite, almost sickly sweet, and told in a lot of sweeping prose.  The story felt so farfetched to me not in that it couldn't happen but that these characters were living in some fantasy that wasn't romantic, just pathetic.  Hope you have better luck!

What You Do To Me comes out next week on October 17, 2023 and you can purchase HERE.  

This inquisitiveness, the inherent need to understand every song, every story, has made Cecilia Rolling Stone's darling. Decades ago, at twenty-six, she discovered a career gold mine when a chance encounter sent her on a quest to find the woman who inspired "What You Do to Me," the hugely popular love song by the band High Tide. The song topped music charts and broke records, but it was also personal for Cecilia. Desperate to unearth the truth and prove herself, Cecilia broke the story behind the hypnotic track, resulting in one of the magazine's most popular columns, the Backstory. And tonight, she is being honored with an award. Not the Lifetime Achievement, something less "your career is nearly over" and more "we're ready for even greater things from you."