The book opens dur­ing the mid-1960s and rock and roll is all the rage. JJ Green des­per­ate­ly wants to be part of this excit­ing music scene. She knows she has the tal­ent to write music; all she needs is oppor­tu­ni­ty and expe­ri­ence. Her lawyer par­ents do not share her aspi­ra­tions. They want her to fol­low in the fam­i­ly foot­steps and become an attor­ney. It’s worked out well for them, her broth­er plans to fol­low suit, and they don’t under­stand why JJ is attract­ed to the rock and roll world like her per­sona-non-gra­ta uncle. They are any­thing but sup­port­ive of her goals and are quite sure that she would­n’t suc­ceed in any event. But spir­it­ed, plucky JJ defies the odds, her par­ents, the show-biz execs, and some bad luck and learns to take advan­tage of her tal­ents. She grabs hold of the pos­si­bil­i­ties and she refus­es to let go. 

This is a live­ly, fun throw­back to an era not-so-long-ago but long enough for the world to have changed quite a bit. Will today’s kids be able to relate to the sto­ry? They will. The lure of show busi­ness still exerts its pull, defi­ance of par­ents still has potent charm, many Jew­ish fam­i­lies con­tin­ue to have some of these char­ac­ter­is­tic dynam­ics, and a glimpse into this inter­est­ing time peri­od can be allur­ing. Watch­ing a young, fear­less teen stum­ble, cor­rect, reori­ent and pre­vail is time­less enter­tain­ment no mat­ter the set­ting and when she even finds love along the way, who can argue with that? 

The author has vast expe­ri­ence in the music busi­ness and has won pres­ti­gious song-writ­ing awards, her­self. One won­ders if the book has some bio­graph­i­cal fea­tures in spite of the added mur­der mys­tery ele­ment. She draws a vital, excit­ing pic­ture of the music envi­ron­ment. Some of the char­ac­ters are a bit of a car­i­ca­ture ​“type” but that rings true, as well. Read­ers ages 12 and up will have a good time with this and learn a bit about the ear­ly days of rock and roll and, impor­tant­ly, the civ­il rights strug­gle of the era.