Rock & Release by Riley Edgewood

Title: Rock & Release (Summer Love Series #1)

Author: Riley Edgewood

Publisher: Self-Published

Release Date: January 2, 2015 (Previously released as 3-part serial)

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Kobo

Formerly release as a serial, Rock & Release contains all three acts (VIP, Starstruck, & Show Stopper) together in one seamless novel.

Cassidy Evans is looking for an escape over her college summer break. And when one night with a few too many martinis leads her to sexy guitarist, Gage Logan, she may have found exactly what she needs. 

He’s sweet and kind, and in the bedroom he’s enough to make Cassidy forget her own name. Multiple times. But as her heart opens to Gage, feelings she’s been trying to avoid slip through, too. Regret over her rocky relationship with her parents. Pain from her brother’s recent death. Guilt over a fallout with her best friend…As much as she craves Gage, she can’t unlock her heart the way he deserves.

Enter Luca James, international rock star and lead singer of Gold Rush Standard. Cassidy can’t stand his music. She can’t stand his arrogance. And, when he sets his sights on more than the drinks she serves him, she especially can’t stand how she’s drawn to his no-strings-attached flirting.

Soon Cassidy will have to make a choice: ignore her heart and go after the carefree life she covets, or stand strong to face a bittersweet reality. 

Either way, she risks losing everything she truly wants.

You’ve probably heard me say before that I am often hesitant to read self-published books, but every so often I make exceptions. With Rock & Release, I made an exception because I know the author, Riley Edgewood (well I do on Twitter, but you get my point). And believe me when I say that it was absolutely and completely worth the exception. I loved every single moment of this sexy new adult story.

When she came home, Cassidy Evans thought she knew what her summer was going to be like. But after a night spent in the VIP area of a bar drinking a few too many martinis,  her plans seem to be changing. Before long, Cassidy finds herself being offered a job tending bar instead of the business internship she had planned. And then there’s Gage Logan, the sexy guitarist Cassidy meets at BackBar, who seems to be just the escape she’s looking for. And there’s a lot Cassidy is looking to escape. But the more time she spends with Gage, the more she finds herself wanting more than just a fling. Except Cassidy can’t find a way to open herself up to Gage the way he has to her. Instead, Cassidy lets herself be drawn to arrogant rock star Luca James and his offer of no-strings-attached fun. Before long, Cassidy finds herself torn between a carefree life and the possible for a real relationship. She just has to choose what she really wants.

So. Rock & Release. It was initially released as a three-part serial and that’s how I read it. Which would have been fine had all three parts been released when I started reading it. But no. When I read it, only the first two were out and by the time I got to the end of the second part, I was pretty much begging for the third part. I just had to know how the story ended, what, and more importantly who, Cassidy would choose. Simply put, Riley Edgewood just wrote an addicting story. And again, like I’ve said, the fact that it was told in three parts just made it that much more addicting. Or at least it did to me. And that’s because the story itself was just great. I loved reading about Cassidy and everyone working and coming and going at BackBar. I loved reading about the romance between Cassidy and Gage and between Cassidy and Luca. And of course it didn’t hurt that the romance in these books was just HOT and engrossing. Let’s just say that there’s a whole lot of sexy in this book and this story and I loved every bit of it.

Cassidy is very much a character you can relate to. Well, I could definitely relate to her. It’s the summer before her last year of college (I think I’m remembering this correctly) and she’s not really sure about what she wants to do once she finishes school. And on top of that, she’s dealing with having lost her brothers less than a year earlier and how that’s affected her family. Needless to say that Cassidy has a lot going out and I can understand why she would want to find a way to escape all that for the summer. In way though, in wanting to escape her life, she was able to find herself and better understand what she wanted. Or at least she did by the end of the story. And that meant spending time with Gage and Luca. Much like Cassidy, I feel for Gage right away, I was just willing to admit it to myself. And that’s because Gage was an absolutely fantastic guy. I loved him and how caring he was and everything he was willing to do for Cassidy. So I did get annoyed with Cassidy when she wanted to throw it all away. For Luca of all people. Don’t get me wrong, Luca isn’t inherently bad or anything. I just didn’t take to him the way I did to Gage. There were moments where I would start really liking him, but then something always seemed kind of off with him. And he was just way too arrogant for my liking. But he was necessary to this story. Cassidy needed him in order to figure out what she really wanted. So for that, I liked him, because he got Cassidy to where I would really hope she would go.

So yeah, I really loved reading Riley Edgewood’s Rock & Release. It was a sexy, thoughtful new adult read that was addicting to read. If you’re looking for a good and sexy NA to read, I can’t recommend this one enough. And lucky for you, the whole story is available in one book now. So go get it, you won’t regret it.