Tell Me S'more - Beth Merlin

Tell Me S’more
Beth Merlin
(The Campfire Series, #4)
Published by: Firefly Hill Press
Publication date: May 25th 2021
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary

“A beautifully written contemporary romance, with plenty of enjoyable comedy, it challenges us to evaluate our lives and make big decisions on who we want to be and not necessarily what everyone expects us to be.” – Adventures in Lit about The Campfire Series

Camp Chinooka was supposed to be a place of inspiration, the place where Perry Gilman would finally compose his symphonic masterpiece. But four years later, Perry Gillman isn’t any closer to his dream of becoming a world renowned musician. Instead, he fell love in with Gigi Goldstein and he thought that love would be enough. Now, struggling to find the right subject for a new musical while hustling as a piano player at a local jazz bar, he can’t help but measure his own shortcomings to his famous father’s monstrous success. So, when he stumbles onto the idea to write a musical about the life and times of Elizabeth I, everything finally changes. The musical is an international sensation and suddenly, Perry is on the fast track to super stardom.

However, fame and success come at a price. When his relationship with Gigi is thrown into a tailspin, he must decide whether to follow his dream for which he fought for so long or sacrifice it all for true love.

Told from Perry’s perspective, Tell Me S’more shows that there are two sides to every story and a cost to every choice.

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Author Bio:

Beth Merlin has a BA from The George Washington University where she minored in Creative Writing and a JD from New York Law School. She’s a native New Yorker who loves anything Broadway, rom-coms, her daughter Hadley, and a good maxi dress. She was introduced to her husband through a friend she met at sleepaway camp and considers the eight summers she spent there to be some of the most formative of her life. One S’more Summer is Beth’s debut novel.

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My Review

It's always hard when you come to a series mid-way through. Will it work as a standalone? Will I understand what's happening? While I think that both of these are true for Tell me s'more, I do think I would probably have enjoyed it, even more, had I read the other books first.

This isn't a romance really, although perhaps the series as a whole might fall into that. Really, it tells the story of Perry and his slightly troubled relationship with his father and how that drives him to really chase his dreams and be all that he can be. His relationship does suffer alongside the growth of his career and this made for an interesting read, but with not having read previous books, I hadn't really got the connection between Perry and Gigi. By the end of it, I was invested in if Perry was going to be successful, but I wasn't bothered one way or another about their relationship. As I say, I'm sure that this might be different if I had read the other books. 

Perry is supposed to be British, I say supposed to be because I just didn't really see him as being a Brit. I think much of this is because the author made lots of little mistakes that probably wouldn't be noticed unless you were from the UK yourself. These weren't major things, just streets with numbers as high as 1112, which is almost unknown and certainly not likely where they were. Talking about Grammar school, when talking of secondary school years (even someone who went to a grammar would be unlikely to refer to it as such) being charged to go into the V and A. At one point he mentions the fourth year as being the same as a senior in the US. Again, such a minor thing, but fourth-year is around 14 years old, upper sixth would be nearer to the senior year, in any case, it's not a term that's been used for nearly thirty years as they are now year seven, eight, nine, etc. As I say, not something that would probably even be noticed by many people, but there was so many that they just built up and irritated me.

This was an interesting and entertaining read, it wasn't quite what I was expecting, but was good all the same. There's clearly still more to come with this story and I'm not sure where it will go next.

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