My friends at Forever know me far too well sometimes. While visiting their office in NYC, Dana offered me an early copy of Still Into You by Erin Connor because it’s about a music journalist and has emo nostalgia. Well, that’s all the convincing it took me as a journalist who grew up rockin’ out to emo and punk music.
Still Into You [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] is told through Sloane’s perspective as a young music journalist. She’s working as a freelancer for Alternative Press (yes, that hit me right in the feels from page one) and while working on a column, runs into her ex. Her ex, Dax, happens to be the frontman of a popular metal band that’s had some rough run-ins with the press and haven’t done interviews in years.
But, that’s about to change.
Sloane gets called into her boss’ office to get her assignment, and finds her ex’s band wants her to write their first interview piece in 8 years. She isn’t upfront about her relationship with Dax when she takes the assignment, and they decide that they’ll keep it professional. But of course, old feelings start bubbling up, making things a bit more complicated than they expected. With the world watching and Sloane constantly getting scooped, the pressure is higher than ever.
This one started really slow for me, but did improve. It took a couple different attempts to get past the first 30 pages, which is normally my minimum for a first attempt at a book. However, as I continued, the emo nostalgia took over and sucked me in as I got to know the characters better. I ended up really enjoying this story as they fought through all the challenges to get back to each other.
I appreciated that this book shows some of how rough it is for women in journalism. Sloane is struggling with mistreatment from her mentor at her previous job. She’s trying to find her voice again after he watered it down and masqueraded her work as his own. Her current boss is showing signs of also being trash, and that has her on edge about her career.
I’ve seen this compared to Daisy Jones and The Six, but I would disagree. The only thing they have in common is music and transcripts. This has an entirely different vibe, from the genre, to being a male-fronted band, to the writing style, to this being the POV of the journalist, not the musician.
Overall, this is a book worth picking up and I’m curious about the author’s prior work.
Literary Hypewoman 
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