I enjoyed Erin Connor’s Still Into You so much, like so, so much. The primary narrator Karissa Vacker, was great. The interstitials were narrated by William DeMerritt, Donald Chang, James Fouhey, Robb Moreira, and Greg Chun voicing each of the members of the band, Final Revelations.
Still Into You is a second chance romance between two people who so clearly want to be together. Sloan, is a music journalist given the opportunity to interview a band that famously doesn’t give interviews. She had an intense 6 week romance with the band’s lead singer, Dax Nakamura, three years earlier. Dax is a Blasian vocal phenomenon who joined an existing band as a teenager. The two, having reconnected professionally, quickly fall back into their old flirting with insults dynamic. Working together also gives them a chance to revisit what didn’t work in their first romance. Despite clearly being so into each other, they move fairly slowly, exploring Sloan’s fears of losing herself, Dax’s mental health struggles, and what they imagine from the future. I love that Sloan’s initial intention is to reach a place of peace with Dax. The story is told almost entirely from Sloan’s point of view, and it works here in part because she is also working as a journalist. She is questioning Dax’s motivations and specifically asking him to be open. She’s very aware of when they are holding themselves at a distance and when they are being vulnerable.
There are two kinds of logic happening in Still Into You, emotional logic and plot logic. The emotional logic is five stars. Excellent. The plot logic was imperfect. Sloan is trying to launch her career as a music journalist and is concerned about the impact her past relationship with Dax will have on the way she is perceived. That’s rational, logical, and an excellent external barrier to getting back together with Dax. Where it got to be a problem was when she decided to hide it from her editor. From that choice, there are some logic leaps near the end that didn’t quite work for me. But, again, the emotional logic of the choices she makes with Dax are great. As she demonstrated in Unromance, Erin Connor isn’t afraid to tackle layered and messy emotions and relationships.
Still Into You is a period piece – set from the late 1990s to the early 2010s. Given what we’ve seen happening in social media and journalism in the last decade, this story really can’t be a contemporary.
I received this as an advance listener copy from Hachette Audio and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
