Rave Review for “The Rock Star & The Outlaw”

Three cheers for The Rock Star & The Outlaw! Check it out.

Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/RockStarOutlaw

Review by Lindsey Martin-Bowen

BOOK REVIEW: The Rock Star & The Outlaw by Kaye Lynne Booth

At first glance, the title The Rock Star & The Outlaw intrigued me. Archetypes spur my interest, and here were two of them. Add to those archetypes, other genres: romance, adventure-thriller, time-travel adventure, and an author hooks me—a tough audience (veteran college/university literature and writing instructor/professional writer and editor).

Within this novel, author Kaye Lynne Booth created an offbeat love story that never lapses into sentimentality or becomes “precious.” Instead, it hooks the reader with precise external descriptions and character’s thoughts, actions, and crisp dialogue—beginning with the initial interplay between the two main characters, “Amaryllis,” a 2025 rock star who encounters “LeRoy,” a cowboy outlaw tossed into the twentieth century from 1887 after he watches a horse for a time-traveler Nick, who lands his time machine into the Old West. (Fortunately for LeRoy, Nick had set the controls to return a user to 2025.) After landing there, shortly afterwards, Cowboy LeRoy met Amaryllis performing at a club—while she attempted to avoid a group of thugs seeking “vengeance most foul” for the death of their leader, Amaryllis’s former paramour, Claude, whom the rock star killed in self-defense.

Although unbeknownst of LeRoy’s arrival and background, Amaryllis was ready for him. Using apt external and internal descriptions of Amaryllis, Booth prepares the reader for her initial encounter with LeRoy.

“She’d donned one of her sexiest dresses—the short black sequinned one with the

low-cut back and oval slits that ran up each side, covering the blue and purple areas on her torso

with foundation, so they wouldn’t be noticeable. This dress never failed to turn heads, and tonight,

that was just what she was after . . . There was no question she’d be sharing her bed tonight.”

After she surveyed the room again, she spotted LeRoy, “the guy she’d locked eyes with up on stage standing at the end of the bar, tall and lanky in his denims. His leather vest was cut to display his muscular biceps through the chambray fabric of his shirt. This guy looked like he just walked out of the pages of a western novel. He wore a red bandana around his neck, a black felt cowboy hat . . .dusty cowboy boots . . . and … ooooh … a gunbelt on his hip, complete with six-shooter. A real live cowboy, right here in the middle of Las Vegas. My, my.”

Obviously, Amaryllis didn’t realize how apt her perception was of a “real live cowboy,” because he perplexes her when he lights her cigarette with a stick match. “I guess you’re just an old-fashioned kind of guy,” she said . . . “I like that.”

Yet LeRoy’s reply, “I guess you might say that . . . Some of this new-fangled stuff is kind of overwhelming to me,” perplexed her. She wondered if he was “genuinely naīve or if he was putting on a convincing act.” Nevertheless, she found him “refreshing and different,” perhaps “even a challenge to get into bed.”

After awhile, when the two of them escaped from the backstage entrance to avoid Claude’s gang-mates, she became frustrated with what she considered LeRoy’s personna, especially after he looked “puzzled” when she asked him to point out his car.

“Look, drop the country bumpkin act,” she retorted and was shocked to discover he’d arrived at the club on his horse.

Meanwhile, when she maneuvered her Corvette like an Indiana-500 driver, applying techniques she’d learned from a former boyfriend, who was a professional race-car driver, LeRoy was impressed.

And thus, the romance took off. Together they loved the speed, the adventure of escaping the gang pursuing her. This ensues for awhile, albeit mainly by horseback. And they fortunately are still riding horses when they hit the setting on the time machine to send them to 1887.

So do they settle in 1887, away from Claude’s gang? Or do they gallop into more misadventures there? Well, dear Readers, I urge to read the novel to discover what happens.

Nevertheless, I offer one hint: At the story’s end, I screamed, “Sequel! Kaye Lynne must write a sequel.”

And guess what? Today, I discovered she did, and it will be available in May. Check out both this incredible novel and its sequel on Facebook’s Global Writers and Poets, artists or on Kaye Lynne Booth’s Writing to be Read at https://www.facebook.com/groups/writingtoberead/

I’ll bet fifty cents you’ll be glad you did.

—Lindsey Martin-Bowen, author

Poetry collections include Where Water Meets the Rock,

CROSSING KANSAS with Jim Morrison,

CASHING CHECKS with Jim Morrison;

Fiction: Cicada Grove, Hamburger Haven, and

Rapture Redux