DNF so will not be rating or reviewing. Thank you for the opportunity to read this title.

I found this novel very pretentious and dull.I read all of it carefully, thinking I must be missing something, but ended up bored.Long stretches of the book contain passages of prose more purple than the title. There is no escaping indigo!

It tells the story of Micah, drummer and roadie, recovering from the loss of best friend, Eric, and of Bellamy, singer/songwriter/guitarist , assailed by anxiety and deserted by his boyfriend. They meet while on tour with the band, Escaping Indigo.

As usual, this books deals with men being unable to communicate. Here, there is too much talking and thinking and too little thought. At the end Bellamy and Micah seem to be no closer to understanding each other than when they met.

They do manage to have sex, but it is as unconvincing to me as the rest of their “relationship”. As main characters, they are no more substantial than cardboard cut-outs, albeit drenched in angst.

The only glimmer of real feelings which touched me came in a conversation between Quinn, Eric’s brother, and Micah, which serves as a device to get Bellamy and Micah back together. Here there seemed to be a small spark of a relationship more worthy of development than Micah’s star-struck reverence of Bellamy and Bellamy’s somewhat pathetic dependence on Micah’s bolstering of his oh-so-fragile ego.

The most intriguing part of the book is the title. Is it a reference to the jazz classic “Mood Indigo”? Or to New Age philosophy where indigo represents the 6th chakra (intuition and knowledge)? Or Alice A. Bailey’s Seventh Ray? i would be interested to find out.

Probably 2.5 stars and those mainly for the depiction of how anxiety disorder can affect one’s everyday functioning.

Thank you to NetGalley and Riptide Publishing for the ARC

Escaping Indigo, Eli Lang

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews

Genre:  Romance, LGBTQIA

There's bits I love about this story, the band and music parts, really made me feel I was on tour with the band but...the romance. It was subtle, so subtle it almost disappeared, and for me it didn't really work. 

I liked the guys, but poor Micah, he's had such a sad past, lost his best friend and still feels as if perhaps he could have done more, seen something, made Eric get help. I think we're all like that, feel a kind of survivors guilt sometimes and its played on Micah to the point he was really depressed.
Then Eric's brother gets him the job as a roadie for Escaping Indigo, a band Micah has always admired.

Its a kind of dream world, interacting daily with the band he's so long admired, looked up to, aspired to be like. Bellamy though is very quiet, and you can feel Micah always worrying he's in the way, going to cause offence, be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Poor guy doesn't know what he should do, and then Bellamy starts talking. It's a dream come true for Micah, and as they chat he begins to know Bellamy the man, not just Bellamy lead singer of the band. 
Its odd though, Bellamy himslef and others kind of warn him off, tell him to be carefully, with Bellamy saying he's no good for him, could hurt him etc one moment, and then worrying Micah is going to be like his ex, the last roadie and leave him.
He's pushing away at the same time as he's pulling Micah in and the poor boy is confused.
I so felt for him, he just wants to help, to be a friend and more, part of a couple and its what they do, help each other. Bellamy gets all hurt and offended though at Micah's suggestions and he's back to treading on eggshells trying to keep their relationship going without tipping Bellamy over. 

At times I wanted to smack Bellamy. Yes he's got issues, but he needs to decide what he wants to do, not blame everyone for wanting to help. It seems in the past everyone had just accepted he had moments, periods when he was...quiet, different, struggling and they all just worked round it. 

Its a sweet romance, and I really wanted things to work out but by the end I still wasn't sure whether what they were doing would be enough.
Its a very gentle romance, not a torrid sex-every-other-page read and that's fine by me, I want tenderness, sensuality not just sex and more sex.
Somehow though this book, while being a good read, made me feel part of the scene, didn't quite cut it for a romance read. 

Stars: Three, a gentle read, great band side but for me a slightly unsatisfying ending.

ARC supplied for review purposes by Netgalley and Publishers