The Lightning Bottles

This is a powerful story set in the world of 90's music about the dark side of fame, greed, loss, jealousy and love. The story centres on Jane and Elijah, two people who met as teens, bonded over their love of music, fell in love and discovered the steep price of fame. 

This is an excellent pick for music lovers or fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones and the Six. With some mystery, drama, nostalgia for 90's alternative rock music, pop culture and historical references - The Lightning Bottles has a lot going on and it works.

The story is told in two timelines. One focuses on The Lightning Bottles' rise to fame that's told in a series of flashbacks that puts readers in the middle of the 90's music scene and Jane and Elijah's reaction to their new fame. The other, set years later, is a mystery in the form of a road trip between Jane and a fan who set out to find Elijah who disappeared years prior and was assumed dead. The mystery part was intriguing, but it was seeing the duo's stumbles on their rise to fame that captivated me.  

Stapley explores themes of pervasive misogyny in the music industry, toxic relationships, grief, jealousy, addiction and fame. She also includes many pop culture references - some of which were fictionalized but easy to recognize who was being referenced.

Don't miss this compelling, atmospheric, character-driven rocky Rock romance/mystery that will have you humming 90's music while giving you some food for thought. This book would be perfect for a book-to-big-screen adaptation!

Final Thoughts:

Loved: Nostalgia, Jane & Elijah, pop culture references, misogyny in the music biz

Liked: Modern timeline with Hen

 

My Rating: 4.5 stars

Author: Marissa Stapley

Genre: Historical Fiction, Canadian

Type and Source: Trade paperback from public library

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada

First Published: September 24, 2024

Read: October 21 - 24, 2024

Book Description from GoodReads: The author of New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick Lucky returns with a love letter to rock ‘n’ roll and star-crossed love, following Jane Pyre’s road trip around Europe as she attempts to find out what really happened to her partner in love and music, who disappeared without a trace years earlier, leaving Jane to pick up the pieces.

Jane Pyre was once one half of one of the most famous rock ‘n’ roll duos in the world, 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—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, and then around the world. But then Elijah disappeared and everything came crashing down.

Even now, years after Elijah vanished, Jane is universally blamed and reviled by the public. In an attempt to get some peace and quiet, Jane rents a house in a remote part of Germany where she knows she won’t be disturbed. But on the day she arrives, she’s confronted by her new next-door neighbor, a sullen teenaged girl named Hen who just so happens to be a Lightning Bottles superfan—and who claims to have a piece of information that might solve the mystery of what happened to Elijah, and whether he is, in fact, still alive and leaving messages for Jane after all these years. 

A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, interwoven with flashbacks to the beginnings of Jane and Elijah’s love story and meteoric rise, The Lightning Bottles is a love story, a celebration of rock ‘n’ roll, and a searing portrait of the cost of fame.