Eli and his best friends have a band called Ride On. After four years and hardly any gigs, Eli thinks that the band needs something more. Something to draw interest and compliment their hard rock sound. In walks Kristen. Beautiful and talented, Eli knows she will be the ticket to the band making it big. Eli doesn’t want fame, he wants the ability to help his family take care of his sister, Anna. After a Twitter war gets a bit too real and personal, the band works to keep things together before its first real gig.

The Way It Hurts grabbed me from the first chapter. With the rise of the bands popularity, I kept saying “one more chapter” all the way to the end. A quick read with an easy writing style made the book easy to enjoy and move through.

The plot of the story is easy to predict but the conflicts throughout the storyline keep things interesting. The threats directed at Kristen through Twitter, and in her day to day life, had me worried that the worst would happen but was also a good reminder that the internet is no longer the anonymous place that it once was. While the love story was a bit predictable I like that it wasn’t the focus of the main story.

The characters are well written. Eli was the most surprising of all with a fierce devotion to his sister that surpasses all his other desires. Kristen could have been the traditional catty girl, but really was well developed and deeper than most secondary female characters.

While the book could have ended perfectly with the last chapter, I teared up with the epilogue. I was thrilled that the ending was satisfying, even if not what I was expecting. A great feel just good story that will leave you needing “just one more chapter” until the very end.

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