Review of ‘Let the Beat Drop’ by Cheri Ritz

This was a cute lesbian New Adult romance. This is my second read by Ritz. While I didn’t love this one, I’m happy to say it was better than her debut book ‘Vacation People’. It’s nice to see an author improving with each book that they write and it gives me hope that I will really connect with one of her future books.

I am not the biggest NA fan, but I keep hoping that will change. I don’t know what it is but I feel like New Adult books play really young. I don’t get that feeling with YA, go figure, but NA characters normally feel very immature to me. With this book, the main Sadie is 21 and the other main, Jess, is around 23. They did feel immature to me at times but I was glad that the book as a whole did not feel too young. I think that was partly because of the group of secondary characters Ritz wrote.

One of my biggest complaints about Ritz’s debut was her secondary characters. They added nothing to the story and were not even needed. I’m happy to say that Ritz completely flipped things around for the better in this book. The secondary cast of characters was great and they honestly made the book better for me. The main character Sadie is a drummer and wants to help her mom with her depression and grief. She decides that making a band with her mom and a bunch of other middle-aged moms might just be the ticket. The whole thing was just super cute and ended up being some of my favorite parts of the book. Plus, it was really nice to see Ritz take something she didn’t do as well on in her debut, secondary characters, and make them into the strength of this book.

When it came to the romance for me I thought it was solid. I wasn’t wowed but it was good. I thought the chemistry was pretty well done between the characters. A slightly start and stop pace helped the chemistry slowly build up to a nice level. The angst parts of the romance felt a bit immature and also a little repetitive. The characters kept fighting over the same thing. The actual reason for most of the drama I liked, but the final angsty part was pretty lame. What was funny is that a co-worker calls out one of the main characters on how lame she really is acting. I had to chuckle at an author making fun of how dopey her written angst was. Ritz got points for me on that one.

Part of the angst that I liked had to do with a tiny, baby mystery. People are keeping secrets and, as readers, we don’t know why. I liked that part. I had all these wild ideas and I kept guessing what the secret could be. I was wrong every guess, which I actually like that I could not correctly guess it. Plus, I just had fun trying to figure it out the whole time.

I keep reading New Adult books hoping I’ll enjoy them as much as YA, but I’m not there yet. However, I’m happy to say that I did enjoy this more than I expected. I had some issues with this book, yes, but it was nice to see Ritz grow as an author plus this wasn’t bad entertainment for a few hours. If you are an NA fan looking for a cute story with medium angst, this might just be for you. I’m hoping three times is a charm and Ritz’s next book will really be a book for me. 3.50 Stars.

An ARC was given to me for an honest review.