i think that when a protagonist states something to the effect of, “but that was before all that happened,” the all that in question had better be thought provoking and not fairly predictable.

i liked the premise of the book—namely, that the songs that get stuck in our heads are giving us the answers to life’s challenges. but somewhere along the way (okay, about halfway through), i lost interest in all that. one of the reasons i think it didn’t resonate was that there weren’t any actual lyrics in the book (understandably because it costs dough to reproduce with permission), therefore it made it hard to see things through Mary Beth’s (the title character) eyes.

all in all, okay—not great.