The Music of Love

Read and reviewed for Diverse Reader

I loved it that both men had their specific peculiarities and habits and I loved it that this stayed strong throughout the whole journey.
It was a long and wide story. It had a lot of drama, really a lot! But... it had purpose because it made them grow.

Julian never reach longer than a year with relationships, on the date or nearby the date he just get dumped. Every time he falls deeply in love and every breakup hurts him and make him flee... literally. So he made up his mind... no more getting involved with men, just work and make music.
Zachary is head over heels when he meets Julian. They will be working together for the same firm.
The spark is instant and Julian tries very hard to resist Zachary, he even let his best friend play around as his boyfriend....until Julian can’t anymore.

We can follow their journey and goshhh what a journey it is!!

Be prepared of drama and strong feelings, stubborn friendship, emotional lyrics, the birth of a song, searching souls, a lot of hurt, tears and deep love. Julian and Zachary are lovable and irritating at the same time, but they were more lovable. The friends who surrounded them were all very involved.
This all is written in an engaging and steadfast way. I loved it how the author put down their specific characters and how their journey went. Like I said before, you could love them and at the same time strangle them. All together a great job!

3.5 STARS
The Music of Love by Sandine Tomas was a very good Contemporary romance. There were a few things that I could have done without, but there were also things I enjoyed. This story is told from Julian’s POV. Julian works as a paralegal to pay the bills and is a songwriter and musician by night. His true passion is his music, but he finds himself working sixty-plus hours a week doing a job that he doesn’t necessarily enjoy but is very good at. Julian grew up in Texas. However, three disastrous relationships ending after a year have all had him running away to three different cities which eventually lands him in Washington D.C. He’s convinced that no man will ever love him past the one-year mark and he’s decided to give up on finding love. Plus the fact that he doesn’t want to move again has him set on avoiding any type of relationship outside of his two best friends and bandmates. The problem with this is that we don’t always know what fate has in store for us and sometimes love happens when you least expect it.

Zachary who also hails from the great state of Texas joins the same firm Julian works at as a paralegal while studying to become a lawyer. He decided at an early age that he wanted to become a lawyer so he can valiantly help out the poor and underprivileged while owning his own firm some day. When his new boss sends him to meet his new partner on a lawsuit case, he’s immediately charmed by the hungover and oddly endearing hot mess that is Julian. He’s instantly smitten and wants this man to be his.

Sparks fly from both sides, and even though Julian wants nothing more than to take the handsome and charming Zachary to bed, he decides that would be a mistake as he has a tendency to fall hard and fall fast. Which of course had led to disaster in the past and he’d rather just avoid it. He’s not willing to let history repeat itself. His heart can’t take another break.

The storyline was good. I really thought the description of the characters’ surroundings were very spot on. I could picture where they were, and that was definitely pleasing. The secondary characters were very well thought out as well as their places in the story. They were a little infuriating at times when they decided to meddle, but that added realism to the story. The chemistry Julian and Zachary shared was very well written and beautifully expressed. The conflict would happen, and then it was over, which we all know is never that easy, and then all is well with the lovebirds. Some of the conflicts were more juvenile than what I’d expect from two grown men. It was almost a little too cliché on the main characters’ conflicts. I’ve definitely seen this all done before.

I wish there was more depth to the storyline and not so much focus on having so many various conflicts. They fell head over heels pretty fast in the book and then it was like the focus became just entirely one drama after the next. The editing was great which I’ve come to expect of a Dreamspinner novel.

The Music of Love is fun, entertaining read. The characters are very real and relatable; the writing is witty, incredibly engaging, and easy to read. Even though The Music of Love is a romance, there’s so much more depth to the story than boy meets boy. It’s the story of Julien’s growth as a person and a partner as he goes through the trials of balancing life, work, love, with all the complications that revolve around it, and figuring out how to realize his dream of writing music full time. The author’s magic combination of her often laugh-out-loud funny writing, characters that seem so real but you feel like you’ve met them, and artful storytelling make The Music of Love a great read and impressive debut novel.

Sandine Tomas intensifies the standard rom-com story by giving Julian and Zachary more than superficial challenges in their relationship. Starting with one of the grossest meet-cute scenes I’ve ever read, her characters surprised me with unconventional yet endearing quirks and real-life dilemmas that required them to experience emotional growth before achieving their happy ending. That character development is what set this story apart from the usual for me... it genuinely concerned me how Julian was going to reconcile his need for music and his love for Zachary when it seemed like he was going to have to sacrifice one of them!

Her writing style is crisp and breezy, with just the right amount of background description to allow me to picture the scenes clearly—and I fell in love with how Julian saw Zachary’s eyes!—while her talent for dialog made it so easy to hear all the characters speaking as I read.

Thoroughly enjoyable, and I look forward to what Sandine writes next!

The Music of Love is as fun as it is frustrating. Complex main characters, wide assortment of secondary characters, and told from Julien’s point of view, there are many great aspects and a few not-so-great, but all in all, I enjoyed this read!

I was sucked in from the very beginning, which is a scene that I won’t even begin to describe, but which made me laugh heartily at the sheer realism of the situation. Julien is a character with the ability to see music when looking at objects, and this grants him some incredible insight to apply to his songwriting. Zachary is a man with a plan, his life laid out in five year increments that keep him driving forward toward his objectives. This plan, however, does not hinder his enjoyment of the now, and I loved that aspect, the freeness that brought fresh air into so many scenes.

The storyline is very nicely put together, and I loved so many pieces and parts that led to the whole of it. There is one aspect, however, that I could have done with significantly less of: Julien’s angst. It is a critical piece in progressing the tale, but I spent a goodly amount of time wanting to slap him upside the head and tell him to grow up already! His self-doubts are understandable, but his inability to move forward by separating them and only taking those parts that are necessary to his growth made him come off almost like a middle school drama-ridden early teen.

The multitude of secondary characters each added great things to the whole. From Gabe’s and Marc’s loyalty to and protectiveness of their best friends Julien and Zachary, respectively, to the office staff and one quirky drummer that allowed the truly wonderful Randy to enter the story, I enjoyed each and every one of them and their interactions within the story.

In the end, I’m rating this at three stars. This is really a good debut novel from an up and coming writer, I look forward to watching her continued growth in the literary world! If you like angst (which I certainly do, within reason), give this a read. If you are a music lover, definitely give this a read for the awesome perspectives of Julien’s music! If you’re looking for a new author, I definitely suggest Sandine Thomas!


I voluntarily read an ARC copy of this book for Divine Magazine from Dreamspinner Press with hopes for but no obligation to provide a review.

**Same worded review will appear on Goodreads, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.**