100 Books Like Rhythm & Muse

I cannot resist a man who loves poetry, much less Pablo Neruda's poetry. Grip, a songwriter/musician, and Bristol his manager, have room-melting-attraction. I agonized over the unrequited love story and the push-pull of a destined-to-be-together love that stands the test of time, as well as social commentary, thoughts, and feelings that cannot be avoided when love crosses different cultures.

Did I say this novel is chock full of sugar and spice? I haven’t even discussed all the things trying to pull them apart as they cling together for dear life. This story gives tension, release, and satisfaction until the very last lyric.

Listen up Jane Austen fans! I know we have our faves and it's a touchy subject comparing which one is the best, but let's go ahead and throw Dorsey Fitzgerald and DJ Liza Bennet’s names into the hat please, please, and please!

I absolutely love this modern take on Pride and Prejudice. I also got a kick out of the chapter titles as well as the supporting family cast. Talk about a juicy retelling with lots of moving parts. Gentrification is a real, relevant, and current thing, and the novel hits all the right themes.

While reading, I knew the romance would deliver a happy ever after, but how? This is where Pride and Protest shines. Such a great take on the original classic!

Romance with a side of attempted murder, anyone?

When I read a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book, I am immediately dropped in the middle of an intangible situation and this book delivers, over and over. Dean Robilard and Blue Bailey are two scared children living in adult bodies, and hiding within the confines of their complicated lives, and pasts marred by trauma.

I love messy characters trying and failing at life because their transformation is so satisfying. I always wonder, “How the hell are they going to get out of this?” The music element, this time in rock and roll, again shows the intricacies of the business and the effect it has on the characters' personal lives when trying to build a career and find love.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the legendary McClain Brothers series, everyone’s favorite and mine. The name Big South will forever be seared into your mind and heart, and his queen Jo Walker is so dynamic. Wait until you see her in action!

From the moment I pressed play, I always had this book in my ear. I just couldn’t stop. The way this story is developed, the surprises, and the seemingly hopeless hardships that this couple faces, wow! I just kept rooting for them the whole time. I was completely addicted, but this isn’t unusual for me and my love of ANYTHING Alexandria House. Another epic read.

If you, like me, believe in the universality and power of ordinary people’s lives, then this book is essential. LeBlanc spent 11 years reporting it, practically living with the people who would become its main characters and who she followed as they sold drugs, went to prison, got pregnant, committed murder, and went on with their lives.

The only downside to reading this as a fellow journalist is that it is so awe-inspiring as to be intimidating and makes you want to hang it up and do something else.

New York City includes all five boroughs. When it was first published in the early 1990s, this creative book that weaves the stories of four Dominican sisters through the decades backwards from the 1980s to the 1960s was a real gamechanger.

It’s about a family that’s been taken down a few notches—having once lived as upper-class citizens with house servants in the Dominican Republic—as they adjust to New York City culture, and specifically, life in the 1960s and 1970s Bronx, and unpack the truth about their father’s reasons for relocating the family in the first place.

Part of the narrative also serves as a relatable coming-of-age story about teenage girls, their sisterhoods, and friendships. Think Judy Blume, but Dominican, with more house parties, food, and drinking. 

This YA Horror novel, by an Afro Dominican nonbinary author, won the prestigious Pura Belpré Award and was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award.

The Bronx setting is depicted with such grit (spanning decades), it’s practically a character in its own right. I loved how the novel tied together a twisted “game,” similar to an urban legend, with a real, and very dark chapter of NYC history. It will definitely appeal to true crime fans, like myself, and features likable teen characters that are also relatable to adult readers. 

Booth is an extraordinary writer and Tyrell is her signature story. Tyrell is a young man living under incredible pressure with a family that needs him to have both feet on the ground. But he's always on the verge of going the wrong way. Will the need for fast money put him in prison like his father? Booth is in complete command of her characters, story and pacing here. A marvelous book that will make you grateful for your own choices in life.

Until David wrote his book, there hadn’t been a biography of Kubrick in over twenty years. While his book is short, it is very readable, and I found it the most intriguing of the short biographies.

Mikics conducted new interviews and visited Kubrick’s archive in London. His readings of Kubrick’s films are precise and elegant.

Order a Martini (straight up, or with ice chiming against the glass), then settle with this charming book and the “quintessential cocktail” that merits its own chapter in the imbiber’s US history tour. Grimes wears learning lightly while pointing out the cultural vagaries over four centuries of pleasurable distillation, brewing, and fermentation. Who knew the American Revolution was first fomented in 1700s village taverns? Or that the familiar Gilded Age “Bronx” (named by the Waldorf-Astoria’s master mixologist) was the very first cocktail to use fruit juice?

Author Grimes chides the 1960s Yuppies (a.k.a. young urban professionals) for purist insistence on “imported beer” and “the rarest of single-malt Scotches,” but concludes the country and the cocktail survived and are all the better for it. He gets no argument from me!