2.5/5
This novel shined brightest when it was focusing on the MC's love of Broadway, or drawing correlations between Romeo & Juliet/Roman & Jewel's fated relationship with Jerzie & Zeppelin's. The concept for the Roman & Jewel script and the glimpses into its plot that we see are beautiful and I really wish we got to see more, perhaps a little bit at the beginning of each chapter. The pieces where we see the parallels between the musical and Jerzie & Zep are the most beautiful prose in the book. Even as someone with only a passing knowledge of musicals, the love of theater in this story is infectious. The admiration and budding mentorship that Jerzie grows with the Lin Manuel Miranda-like writer Robert Christian Ruiz is really precious and I would have loved to have seen even more of that. Jerzie and Zep have a very cute relationship and it is enjoyable to read their conversations together where see them being playful or nerdy. However, the insta-love on this one is very hardcore which is never the most realistic trope. There are also some times where we see personality traits pop up in Zeppelin or Jerzie to be used as plot devices and then they get dropped without ever being fully utilized. For example, Zeppelin's over-protectiveness which in turn makes Jerzie stubborn and act out which caused one quarrel and then was never mentioned again. Cinny also had a bit of a hasty redemption arc. I appreciate them making her multi-dimensional and flushing out her motivations, but it was a bit of a late game curve-ball after her clearly being a villain. It was a quick book to breeze through and it was cute, I just feel like it had the potential to be so much more if the author had taken that leap and dove deeper. I enjoyed it for what it was though!

WOW! What a way to modernize history so that our youth can get a taste of it. This is reality and encompasses the issues that our children are faced withIn today’s society. Davis’s ability to wore this novel blew my hand! Read it, use it!

I LOVED this book! The imagery and the how the characters were built kept me hooked. Jerzie is fun and quirky—her love and knowledge of music is unmatched. The way the author describes all of the scenes makes your imagination run wild. I can clearly see eyes of Zeppelin. Speaking of Zeppelin—can we say star crossed lovers?! I hope this isn’t the end of their story. I would love to read more from Dana L. Davis!

Roman and Jewel is a contemporary YA romance about Jerzie Jhames, an up and coming black broadway actress, who is cast as an understudy after her rival, Cinny, gets the lead. She tries her best to fall into the background of the cast but her co-star, Zeppelin Reid, has his eyes set on her. The problem is Cinny is the star and she has her eyes set on Zeppelin. Overall, it is about love, ambition, and good old fashioned hater-aid.

What I loved most about this book is the lead character, Jerzie. Even if the plot sucked, which it doesn't, Jerzie is a funny and genuine character. She also has a strong passion for dance and Broadway and she is pursuing it the hard way, which I think has a lot of value. I think that this is a strong character for a young, black female to have in their library.

As for the romance, eh. Kind of my same thoughts on the cover art. It wasn't all that dangerous and some of the "teen" speak was off. At times, Jerzie felt more like an adult than a barely legal teen, but I also don't believe that teenagers should be spoken down to in books. I didn't catch so much of a Hamilton reference as was hyped out but I was intrigued as to how that would play out in the book. The delivery of those sequences felt a little heavy to the flow of the story but it wasn't so much so that it made me put the book down. I definitely was up reading this at night. In bed. When I should've been sleeping, so yeah..

If you're on the fence, I'd give it a try IF you like YA romance. You have a young black woman who is driven by something deeper than love in this novel and she isn't all disrespectful but isn't pure (she's complex). It's enjoyable and light.

After all the hype with this book, it was a bit of a letdown. Hamilton meets a modern Romeo and Juliet? Hardly. Definitely not as good as I thought it was going to be and the two main characters didn't have much real dialogue. Jerzie was bland as a character. I had high hopes for this and the "love story" was tepid at best. An ok-ish read but I was annoyed reading this. It is a no for me, but I will let other reader's decide.

Thanks to Netgalley, Dana L Davis and Inkyard Press Own Voices for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available 1/5/21

Thank you so much for such an early ARC, it's an honor. With the Hamilton professional capture right around the corner, I'm excited about the synergy this created with it. This is a lovely story about the fictional innerworkings of showbiz, a topic I'm very fond of myself.

I’ve never had my heart broken, but I’d imagine this is how it feels: being utterly let down by a book you’ve pinned so many of your 2020 hopes and dreams on.

First: I was promised a hip-hopera musical retelling of Romeo and Juliet with a diverse cast. That sounds badass. That sounds amazing. Hamilton meets West Side Story by way of YA fiction… that’s gotta be one of the BEST things I’ve heard in a long time.

But there’s hardly a musical. Only the barebones: the names of a few songs, a sentence here or there about the storyline. Instead, most of the book is dedicated to Jerzie and Zeppelin's love at first sight, and Cinny’s petty exploits—which is such a shame, because the parts about the musical, though few, were pretty freakin’ awesome. (I am a big fan of Robert Christian Ruiz AKA Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fictional avatar.)

Next: I was promised a story that was going to be vividly funny, honest, charming—and above all, romantic. Instead I was handed lackluster dialogue, a haplessly lovesick protagonist, over-the-top gushing and swooning, and a love interest meant to be sweet/hot/intriguing but who I found to be kinda insufferable. (Not to mention I was picturing Zeppelin as a melanin god—only to have him turn out to be an Edward Cullen lookalike 😭 Talk about BUMMED)

And I’m not even going to touch Cinny, who is utterly one-dimensional and a total cliché of a pampered celeb-villainess. She has a whiplash-quick redemption arc at the end that I’m grateful for, but I’m still annoyed with how shallow her character was made out to be.

What takes the cake (and killed all chance for a shippable romance) was one of the worst cases of instalove that I’ve read in a long, long time. Like probably since 2011, when I could still stomach it. Y’all, Jerzie and Zeppelin are a hot mess. She calls him her "anti-gravity" and "forever until eternity" within an hour of meeting him. And the mushy language only gets WORSE as the book progresses.

That being said, I thought Jerzie’s habit of touching her cheeks when she’s embarrassed was so goshdarn CUTE. And in the moments where Zepp’s out of the picture and Jerzie talks about her fierce love for musicals and New York, her dream to be on Broadway to move people, the way she felt when she first heard “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret… Those were some genuinely beautiful moments.

Some of the best bits, though, involve Jerzie’s brother, Judas (the Wall Street-obsessed, anti-capitalist goofball who’s got her back) and her Aunt Karla (kickass and no-nonsense but also a lot of fun). Aunt K’s filled with sage tidbits that I’ve hoarded, including:
• Age nineteen is really only about eleven in boy years
• The best way to deal with jealousy is to accept what’s yours and honour what’s theirs
• Names become amazing because they’re attached to amazing people—so don’t change your name, change your trajectory
• A boy/man is not a destiny, but a Broadway show DEFINITELY is

CONCLUSION: I think if you’re a fan of Nicola Yoon and insta-lovey fluff, you’ll like this more than I did. Meanwhile I’m just going to sit here in my blanket burrito, ogling Roman and Jewel’s coverporn, mourning this book for all it could have been.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but I was your garden-variety high school theater kid. I obsessively listened to Broadway cast recordings, starred in every school production, and tried to pretend I could belt when I was home alone and/or driving (spoiler alert: I couldn’t). So my delight when I saw that there was a musical theater-themed YA contemporary coming out was unmitigated.

And it was EVERYTHING.

“Roman & Jewel” is insanely readable: it’s fast-paced but doesn’t feel frantic and has a pretty quick start, so it never feels like it drags; the characters are compelling even if I hated them (look, I *know* we’re supposed to sympathize with Cinny at least a little bit, but I COULD NOT STAND HER OKAY???), the author’s knowledge of the inner workings of a theater is evident, and the rehearsal scenes are *magical.* I couldn’t wait to read more about the musical itself, which is a modern retelling of Romeo & Juliet – basically, for all you fanfiction readers out there, this version of the play is a reincarnation AU (yes, I just outed myself, and yes, I’ve written 50k+ words of Zutara fanfic in the last month, SHUT UP) where the leads have to find each other in all of their lifetimes. The way Davis described the rehearsals, songs, and choreography made me feel like I was really watching, and it was impossible not to root for Jerzie. She was perhaps the only major character who wasn’t at least a little bit morally grey, but that honestly worked in her favor. By setting her up as the only reliable source of information we had (and even that was a little debatable given how many people deceived her, though that obviously wasn’t her fault), it gave us ample reason to root for her. Add that to her easy likability, and Jerzie made for a protagonist I could get behind. And although the romance wasn’t always my favorite (SPOILER I know he turns out to be a good guy but uhhh…what was going on in the middle there?), it certainly kept me guessing.
Simply put, “Roman & Jewel” was the compulsively-readable musical theater romance of my dreams, and EVERYONE needs to run out and get this when it’s released!

ENDNOTES:

Best Scene: the “I Think I Remember You” scene, DUH.

Most Underrated Side Character: Jerzie’s brother was SO SWEET. He was protective but knew when to back off, which reminded me a little bit of my own older brother (we have the same age gap as they do) if he weren’t determined to rat me out to our mother every time I so much as liked a boy. :/

Content: some cursing, one instance of drug use (not glamorized and the character makes a point of saying she doesn’t intend to do so again), and one kiss scene that gets a little…*spicy.* Other than that stuff, this was a pretty clean read.

Rating: 5/5 Confused Emu