Seth Arnold learned at an early age that two things in life could make his soul soar—his violin and Kelly Cruz. In Seth’s uncertain childhood, the kindness of the Cruz family, especially Kelly and his brother, Matty, gave Seth the stability to make his violin sing with the purest sound and opened a world of possibility beyond his home in Sacramento.
Kelly Cruz has loved Seth forever, but he knows Seth’s talents shouldn’t be hidden, not when the world is waiting. Encouraging Seth to follow his music might break Kelly’s heart, but he is determined to see the violin set Seth’s soul free. When their world is devastated by a violent sexual assault and Matty’s prejudices turn him from a brother to an enemy, Seth and Kelly’s future becomes uncertain.
Seth can’t come home and Kelly can’t leave, but they are held together by a love that they clutch with both hands.
Seth and Kelly are young and the world is wide—the only thing they know for certain is they’ll follow their heartstrings to each other’s arms whenever time and fate allow. And pray that one day they can follow that string to forever… before it slices their hearts in two.
Karen's rating:
This one was full out tissues and teddies...
and if you don't know what I mean by that...well, it's really simple you need lots of tissues tor all the tears and a teddy to hug because everyone knows teddies make everything better.
I've been procrastinating about this one for a few days now because it's one of those stories where if a person's not careful they could give away the store and spoil so much of the story and if you haven't read this one yet than just trust me when I say that would be a shame.
'String Boys' is one of the most emotionally, gut wrenching stories that I've encountered in a very long time. It was heartbreaking and beautiful all at the same time. It was filled with love and hatred, anger and fear, beauty and ugliness, strength and weakness and so many diametrically opposed emotions. While it's probably one of the most angst filled books that I've read in a long time it was worth every moment.
Putting this book down once I'd started it was at the absolute bottom of my to do list. I literally got up at 5 o'clock in the morning to continue reading after having stopped at around 1 a.m. because keeping my eyes open any longer just was not possible so I got the minimum amount of sleep that i could and then I snuck out to the living room to carry on reading so that I wouldn't wake my husband up with my crying because crying was inevitable for me...remember I'm the person who cries over the Bell Canada commercials and let's not talk about Hallmark, ok?
More than anything this story is about love...obviously the love that Seth and Kelly share but also the love of family...the one that we are born into and the family that we create. There were so many awesome characters in this book besides Seth and Kelly I can't even begin to explain them all and how much I came to love them but as with any story there were also those that I came to hate...people whose sole purpose in this world isn't to help other's but to tear them down and subjugate them. People who can only feel good about themselves by making others feel bad and ironically it was one of these people who broke my heart and left me with so many tears that I actually had to stop reading for a few minutes because the tears were just too much to continue reading... am I going to tell you who it is? Well of course not, I want you to read the book and figure it out for yourself and let me know if they broke your heart too.
While I'm not going to talk about all of the wonderful characters in this story I am going to at least talk about Seth and Kelly for a few sentences. Seth was such a sweet young man and purely by accident he discovered that he had a gift...the gift of music when Seth played the violin the angels wept. Kelly was equally as wonderful as Seth and his gift was his heart. There were no limits to his ability to love or to what he would sacrifice for those he loved. Don't get me wrong Seth's heart was every bit as amazing as Kelly's and the sacrifices that both of these young men were willing to make without hesitation or thought was beautiful and heartbreaking.
I'm not really sure that there's much else I can say except that this book touched my heart on a deeper level than anything else that I've read in quite a while. The fact that it was written by Amy Lane is no surprise, she's left me in tears on more than one occasion and that's truly not a bad thing. I don't always want sunshine and rainbows in my stories sometimes I want that hard won, fought for happily ever after. I want to be left crying tears of happiness at the end because finally, finally the MCs in the story got the happiness that they deserved...no scratch that the got the happiness that they fought for and earned.
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An ARC of 'String Boys' was graciously provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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