Nashville Skyline

by: Chrissy Coleman

Published by: Egress Books (September 1 release)

Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart

Maggie White wants nothing more than to sing country songs. Stardom isn’t a necessity. She loves singing–and it’s all she has ever wanted to do. However, breaking into the music isn’t easy. Such is the premise for Chrissy Coleman’s debut novel, Nashville Skyline.

Maggie has already found a job and a mentor in Nashville, but it’s not enough. She needs a producer, someone with connections that will record her. As she makes the rounds, producer after producer confirms what she already knows: she had talent.

While the songs and the beat of country music has changed dramatically in the last fifty years, one tiny detail has not. If a girl wants to make it big, she’s expected to put out. Maggie struggles with her upbringing that that isn’t something a girl should do. Still. It seems that man after man uses Maggie, but never breaks her spirit when they don’t help her.

That’s one of the downsides of Nashville Skyline. The first hundred pages or so are weak sex scenes. Yet her spirit, that something compelling about Maggie White, kept me reading. Then Maggie meets Reggie. Reggie has a club and makes Maggie his weekend singer. And yes, there is a sexual price to pay. Reggie—a wealthy, transplanted New Yorker–takes her as his mistress. As her climb to the top begins, Maggie finds herself falling in love with him. And he with her.

Nashville Skyline’s pacing and structure is well-done. Reggie’s New York accent was annoying, but it has more to do with the character than any fault of Chrissy Coleman’s. Besides the rather weak first third of the novel, one problem caused the book to be given three starts as opposed to four. That is the sloppy editing. It’s prevalent throughout the 294 pages and kept pulling me out of the story. Yet, the character development kept tugging at me to read about Maggie and her quest to sing country songs. I’ll be eager to see Coleman’s second novel.

Armchair Interviews says: Another good story where poor editing detracts from the power of the story and characters.