Review: Groupie by C.M. Stunich

Groupie by C.M. Stunich

Series: Rock-Hard Beautiful #1

Publication date: March 21st, 2017

Pages: 396
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

WARNING: This book has one girl and five bad boy rockstars. She owns them all--heart, body, and soul.

Don't read it unless you like to ugly cry... and also unless you like threesomes, foursomes... and moresomes.

"Can one of these five rockstars fill the hole in my heart? Or will I stay broken forever?"

Young, dumb, and broke.

That's what started everything. With five dollars in her pocket, and everything she owns stuffed in the back of her car, Lilith Goode's life is over. Done. Destroyed.

Ten words. One text. That's what it took to change the whole world.

A crumpled concert ticket. A chance encounter. That's what it takes to start all over again.

Five rockstars. One girl. Six dark hearts, six withered souls.

But can one broken person really put another back together again?

And is a cross-country tour the place to do it?

Groupie, Book #1in the Rock-Hard Beautiful Trilogy

a New Adult Erotic Rockstar Romance from International Bestselling Author C.M. Stunich

***GROUPIE is a 130,000 word novel about heartache, love, grief, and the beauty of sex. It contains rockstars, concerts, young love, deep hurt, broken pasts, group sex, one beautiful girl who falls in love with five guys and five guys who fall in love with one beautiful girl. This is a MMMFMM book with a STRONG focus on the woman (although the men aren't scared of each other's bodies). It has a happy ending, NO cliff-hanger, and is the first book in a trilogy.

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Review:

Lilith Goode has nowhere to go anymore. Her goal had been to get to New York and be there for her father in his fight with cancer. She had every intention of taking care of him until the bitter end but all it takes is one text message to derail her entire plan. She is no longer in need of taking care of her father as he has passed away and her family no longer wishes to host her while she gets back on her feet. With a cheating ex behind her and a stubborn stepmom in front of her she has no idea where to turn or what to do. She has only a few dollars to her name and that won't get her life back on track at all. In the face of grief she has to find a way to survive. That is what lead her to the concert to sell the tickets her boyfriend had been kind enough to give her while he walked off with one of the many girls he had chosen over her. She should be able to at least sell the tickets for gas money to be at her father's funeral. Lilith finds herself caught up in a whirlwind of events that lead her face-to-face with the broken band members of Beauty in Lies. Suddenly she wonders if her calling is not to get to New York and see her father one last time but to try to fix the broken pieces of each of the band members who are all in various stages of their own grief. Can the band and Lilith find a way to heal and also to mitigate the heat that seems to rise every time any of them lock eyes with the enigmatic girl with the watery smile?

This first book was by far the best thing I have read since Onyx Storm. There was so much beauty in the poetic way that that the author made her characters look at life around them. They all have troubled pasts but with Lilith they are forced to see the beauty in the heartbreak and start to confront some of their demons that they have kept firmly underwraps for years. The story becomes a voyage of self-discovery for Lilith and a reconnecting and repairing of old wounds for the men. Each of them has some sort of facet that ties them to Lilith and makes them capable of healing within each others' affections. I liked how the author didn't just focus on the relationships developing and dive into sex, sex, sex, but also had moments where she was reflective about life in general. 

As with every guy group I always have my favorite. Ransom is it for me. He is the most broken of all of them and I feel like he connects more thoroughly with Lilith. They seem to have a lot of the same wounds even if their stories are different. I also love that he masks his inability to connect with people normally behind a plethora of pet names. He even calls the other men such names as "sweetheart" and "honey" which makes him an interesting man to watch. He has been put through the ringer almost more than any of the other guys (to date at least) and I look forward to watching him heal more over the rest of the series to become who he truly should be.

I did not read that the book was MMMFMM at first which does make a few things come to light for me. I have made it obvious is some of my other reviews that I am not a fan of M/M within the reverse harem dynamic. To me, I like the worshipping aspect of reverse harems where the woman is put on the pedestal and all the men want to do is make her happy. Relationships within the dynamic feel a bit like cheating for me which I am not a fan of. I know that is hypocritical because the female protagonist is literally sharing her bed with several other men. It just isn't for me and will usually ruin the reading experience for me. Especially if the dynamic is rooted firmly in emotional connection which this one is. I fear that as I read I will not be able to continue if the men I suspect are going to get together actually do. But speaking from the perspective of this book, I have only seen a small bit of it so was able to fully enjoy the book to its fullest. I hope that in the next books that I will be able to keep going with it, but we shall see.