Michelin Moses is a country music star on the rise. With a hit single under his Texas-sized belt buckle and a sold-out concert tour underway, his childhood dreams of making it big are finally coming true. But there’s one thing missing—a promise to his dying mother that he’d find it—him—when the time was right. With a little luck, he won’t have to wait too long...

Lucky Ramirez is a hunky boy toy who dances at The Broom Closet, one of West Hollywood’s hottest gay bars. He loves what he does, and he’s good at it—almost as good as he is at playing dumb when he spots Michelin Moses at the bar. What happens next is off the charts—and keeps Michelin coming back for more. He’s just not sure it’s the right move for his career. But if Lucky gets his way, Michelin will get Lucky—and no matter how the media spins it, neither of them will be faking it...

All Note Long is the third novel in the Perfect Harmony series, but it is the first I have read—reading it as a standalone worked just fine. It is also the third novel I’ve read by Annabeth Albert. As much as I liked Status Update and Beta Test, this one is certainly my favorite of the three I’ve read by her.

Lucky Ramirez is a go-go dancer at one of West Hollywood’s hottest clubs. He’s not a sex worker; he dances because he loves doing it and is working toward the big break he needs to launch his dance career to bigger and better things. While dancing for a birthday party at the club one night, he can’t help but be attracted to the hot, shy, and socially awkward stud the whole group has been daring into stuffing tips down his shorts all night. Michelin Moses left the popular band he started with some friends as a teenager and is now one of the hottest country stars in the country, about to release his second album in the genre. Being gay is something he works to keep from becoming public knowledge because he fears it would alienate his conservative fan base and jeopardize his career doing the one thing he truly loves. But while incognito at the birthday party of one of the young musicians he mentored on a reality TV show, he’s fixated on the sexy dancer and his moves. Unfortunately, someone recognizes him, and before he knows it, his secret is all over the gossip pages of the internet. His publicist is all about damage control, not just to protect him but the record label as well, and her suggestion is to convince Lucky to pretend to be Michelin’s boyfriend long enough for the worst to blow over. As much as Michelin wants it to be real, he can’t risk destroying his career. But for a man who sings about feelings every day, nothing can ever be that simple.

While I found both Lucky and Michelin to be great characters, there is a lot about Michelin in particular that I can relate to, perhaps because I’m also a middle-aged gay man who grew up in a relatively conservative small town. As the story progresses, we learn many of the events of Michelin’s past that have formed who he is now. For the most part, it boils down to things that have fostered insecurity about many things, particularly relationships. In spite of being adored in the public eye, he leads a lonely life and believes that he cannot be good enough for someone else. His career, then, is all he has. And because he’s part of the undeniably homophobic country music industry, he’s essentially at the mercy of his record label. But even more than that, he’s worried about his fans thinking his music is part of some agenda. In spite of his past, though, he is a selfless man with a big heart.

Lucky, on the other hand, has been out of the closet since early high school, so he doesn’t care what people think about his being gay. But being the baby of his family has caused him to take pride in being self-sufficient as an adult. He refuses to take help from anyone—he doesn’t even allow people to buy meals for him. This leads to a good deal of tension as far as the fake relationship is concerned. Combine that with the fact that he is adamant about not being for sale, he refuses to act on his growing feelings for Michelin as long as he’s being paid for the role of fake boyfriend. Yep, good sexual tension builds up because of this, because neither he nor Michelin can deny the attraction that was apparent from the very start. Regardless of the terms of their arrangement, both want more. Eventually they get there, and once they do, it’s not only hot but quickly becomes full of all sorts of the best kind of feels.

The setting of the story clearly lends itself to dealing with some social issues. Without giving out spoilers, I will say that the events that take place once Michelin is outed, both those of the public and of his publicist and record label, felt very realistic. In fact, they sounded vaguely familiar to the real-life situation around certain bands’ public disapproval of the Iraq War several years back, so for someone like me who knows essentially nothing about the politics within the music industry, I was convinced.

Romances involving music are often among my favorites, and I can say All Note Long is no exception. There’s just something about the power of music to express feelings that might not be so easy to express in just words that appeals to me. And I love being able to feel the music in a novel, so when an author does grand romantic gestures through music, it almost always works for me. And in this case, does it ever. Brava, Ms. Albert. Brava.

The author generously provided me a complimentary copy of All Note Long in exchange for this fair and honest review.

I was gifted a copy in exchange for an honest review. 

On Perfect Harmony, the ambitious competitors heat things up on stage and off…
Love Me Tenor (Perfect Harmony #2)
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Released February 16, 2016
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