June is National DJ month, so we have music on our minds! The movie Song Sung Blue (Focus Films, 2026) is a fictionalization of a 2008 documentary (same title!) about Mike and Claire Sardina, a couple who joined musical forces to provide entertainment as Neil Diamond interpreters: Mike had the voice, the costuming, and the moves, and Claire, his biggest fan, provided accompaniment, backup vocals and rhythm. When a terrible accident resulted in Claire needing to relearn how to stand, walk, and dance, it's like the music has gone out of her life... but music is the thread that helps her hold her life together, and the bond that brings them back to one another.
Read on for music-themed novels about unrequited love, instrumentalists pitted against one another for first chair, relationships that break up bands, bands that break up relationships, couples who find a way to make beautiful music together--and a gritty story about a Neil Diamond obsession.
All The Right Notes by Dominic Lim 🌶️🌶️
In this hilarious and joyous rom com, sparks fly when a piano genius and a Hollywood heartthrob are thrown together for a charity performance of solos, heartfelt duets, and a big, showstopping finale.
August Lane by Regina Black 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing “Another Love Song.” God, he hates that song. But performing his lone hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. Following another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol—90’s era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who’s being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small hometown he swore he’d never see again...
Asking her former college boyfriend, Max Harcourt, to go public as her songwriting muse, megastar Riley Wynn, when he joins her and her band on tour, starts to realize that, despite the sour notes in the past, their future could hold incredible things.
Though they had chemistry on stage, off stage the members of the band Daisy Jones & The Six clashed; their interviews years later are candid, direct, sometimes pained, and sometimes funny as they collectively form the oral narrative of the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of the hottest (fictional) rock band of the 1970s.
When seventeen-year-old Neil Garvin, a popular high-school quarterback, accidentally commits a horrifying crime, his abusive father--the Neil Diamond-obsessed local sheriff--covers up for him, until the FBI arrives and father and son become locked in a confrontation that could tear them apart or set them free.
New Orleans, 1917: a clarinet player meets his hero. Kansas City, 1940: a young girl investigates the mystery of her father's lost love of music. Los Angeles, 1977: a band embark on a world tour that may be their last. Writers KYLE HIGGINS and JOE CLARK (RADIANT BLACK) are joined by an ALL-STAR CAST OF ARTISTS for an anthology of stories that weave tales of struggle, joy, and hope through the history of jazz!
The Farewell Tour by Stephanie Clifford
It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time. Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and Nashville, plus a few new ones. She yearns to feel the rush of making live music one more time and bask in the glow of a packed house before she makes the last, and most important, stop on the tour: the farm she left behind at age ten and the sister she is finally ready to confront about an agonizing betrayal in their childhood.
Glitter Bats series by Jessica James:
For One Night Only #1 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
When two former bandmates—and bedmates—are thrust back into each other's lives in a fake dating scheme for publicity, they'll be forced to face the music.
For Our Next Song #2 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
The decade-long friendship between two rock goddesses is thrust into the spotlight after their mutual desire strikes a perfect—and very public—chord.
The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits by Jennifer Weiner
Sisters Cassie and Zoe were born just a year apart but could not have been more different. Zoe yearned for fame while Cassie was a musical prodigy who never felt at home in her own skin and preferred the safety of the shadows. In the early 2000s, destiny intervened, catapulting the sisters into the spotlight as the pop sensation the Griffin Sisters. But after a year, the band abruptly broke up. Two decades later, Zoe’s a housewife; Cassie’s off the grid. The sisters aren’t speaking. Zoe’s teenage daughter, Cherry, who’s determined to be a star, is on a quest to learn the truth about what happened to the band all those years ago.
Heart Strings (Love in Galway #2) by Ivy Fairbanks 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Surviving cancer taught Lo Valdez that life is too short to spend time on someone who wronged you. But Aidan O’Toole is determined to change her mind. When Lo moved from Texas to Galway, she wasn’t looking for love, but Aidan, a gorgeous, mandolin-playing lawyer, slipped past her defenses. When Aidan was given the opportunity to record an album in Long - he took it, breaking Lo's heart. Two years later, every song he writes is still about her, and when Lo hears his voice on the radio, it’s an arrow straight to her soul. Now they’re on a collision course as maid of honor and best man at a weekend-long Irish castle wedding. Can Aidan convince Lo their song wasn’t meant to end?
A middle-aged art gallery owner begins a passionate fling with a member of her daughter’s favorite boy band, who is 19 years her junior, and must fend off rabid fans and insatiable media after their affair becomes a viral sensation.
Killian, the lead singer for the biggest rock band in the world, crashes his motorcycle on the lawn and into the life of a reclusive small-town girl in this rock star meets normie romance.
Clementine Clark isn’t looking for love. Growing up with a single mom who weeps over a new guy each week tends to have that effect on a girl. She’s even buried her musical dreams so deeply within herself that she hardly notices the hole it’s left in her life... until she's offered a life-changing opportunity: to join Irish megastar Halloran on his first US tour as a backing vocalist. Overnight, Clementine goes from serving enchiladas to belting high notes before a cheering crowd. But the whiplash of trading small-town Texas for sold-out stadiums is nothing compared to the rush of performing with the enigmatic Thomas Patrick Halloran, who strikes an unforgettable chord in Clementine.
When music idol Ai is embroiled in scandal, her sisters, ambitious Rei and single mother Kiki, pause their lives and spend the summer with Ai in their childhood home on the Japanese coast so they can rescue their baby sister.
Kiss the Girl (Meant To Be #3) by Zoraida Córdova 🌶️🌶️
In this contemporary riff on Disney's The Little Mermaid, Ariel del Mar is one of the most famous singers in the world. She and her sisters—together, known as the band Siren Seven—have been a pop culture phenomenon since they were kids. On stage, wearing her iconic red wig and sequined costumes, staring out at a sea of fans, is where she shines. Anyone would think she’s the girl who has everything. But lately, she wants more...
Last Call at the Local (Love, Lists & Fancy Ships #3) by Sarah Grunder Ruiz 🌶️🌶️🌶️
When a careless mistake in Ireland leaves her unable to perform, Rainie Hart, a free-spirited American singer-songwriter living with ADHD, starts working at a local pub where she helps her charming OCD employer, Jack Dunne, reinvent his business, discovering a love to last a lifetime along the way.
After a scandal, Native American pop singer Avery Fox escapes to her grandmother's horse ranch in Oklahoma. Living on the rez is new to Avery, plus the man who runs the ranch despises her and wants her gone. Red Fox Ranch has been home to Lucas Iron Eyes since he was 16 years old. Lucas can't stand what Avery represents, but forced to work with her on the ranch - he can't get her out of his head. They form a tentative truce and make a deal: Avery will help raise funds to save the ranch, and in exchange, Lucas will show her what it really means to be an Indian.
Against her wealthy family's wishes, floral designer Ricki Wilde opens a flower shop in Harlem and befriends jazz musician Ezra "Breeze" Walker, a man who's fallen out of time.
Not Another Love Song by Julie Soto 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Two string players fight their attraction for each other as they compete for center stage in this spicy and emotional romance. Gwen Jackson and Xander Thorne are both musical prodigies, but each has had very different paths to success. Xander was born into classical music royalty, while Gwen had a natural ear for music that was nurtured by a kind shop owner. After Gwen performs at his friend's wedding, she's mortified when she realizes Xander has no clue who she is - despite having worked together for a year at the Pops Orchestra. But she's more furious that he arrogantly critiques her performance.
A sketch writer for a late-night comedy show, Sally Milz pokes fun at the phenomenon of talented but average men who've gotten romantically involved with beautiful women and how the reverse never happens until she meets a pop music sensation who flips the script on all her assumptions.
Two generations of a folk-rock dynasty collide over art, love, longing and family secrets.
Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Haunted by emptiness despite her status as a coveted songwriter, Joni Lark returns to her North Carolina hometown where her family's closing music venue sparks a mysterious telepathic connection with a guarded musician determined to complete a haunting melody.
Wreck The Halls by Tessa Bailey 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
The adult children of two former rock stars who team up to convince their estranged mothers to play a Christmas Eve concert.
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Note: The chili peppers denote the steaminess, or spice level, of a book's romantic/intimate elements; visit https://www.romance.io/steamrating for the key.
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