The Lightning Bottles
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4.5 • 8 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The author of New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick Lucky, a “fiercely visceral and exquisitely written” (People) story of rock ‘n’ roll and star-crossed love—about grunge-era musician Jane Pyre’s journey to unravel the secrets behind her husband’s mysterious disappearance.
He was the troubled face of rock ‘n’ roll…until he suddenly disappeared without a trace.
Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock ‘n’ roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she’s perhaps the most hated—and least understood—woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart—even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame, first in the Seattle grunge scene, then around the world.
But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band’s meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels, and all she wants to do is retreat. What she doesn’t anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenaged girl next door—a Lightning Bottles superfan—who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah alive, he’s also been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find him right away.
A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, The Lightning Bottles is “both a page-turning mystery and a love letter to the grunge era” (LitHub) that captures a searing portrait of the cost of fame.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the dramatic if superficial latest from Stapley (Lucky), a rock star becomes infamous after she's blamed for the disappearance and presumed death of her bandmate husband. Jane Pyre, bassist for the legendary Lightning Bottles, which she formed in the early 1990s with frontman Elijah Hart, is now living in a remote part of Germany, five years after Elijah's disappearance in Reykjavik. Her isolation ends when her next-door neighbor Hen, a 17-year-old Lightning Bottles fan, alerts her to a photo she saw online of graffiti in Berlin, which might contain a message from Elijah. A clue from the art sends them on a road trip to other locations around Europe, where they find more drawings in a similar style, giving Jane hope that Elijah might be alive. The narrative flits between the women's quest and the band's early years, when Jane is discouraged by her religious mother and dismissed by music journalists, who prefer to focus on Elijah and ignore her songwriting contributions. Later, she's blamed by the public for Elijah's self-destructive drug use. While the novel plausibly conveys the pitfalls of fame, Stapley introduces but neglects to explore heavier themes of codependency and exploitation. There's a bit too much filler in this '90s nostalgia trip.
