His world is music. Her world is silent.Ali Collins was a child prodigy destined to become one of the greatest musicians of the twenty-first centuryuntil she was diagnosed with a life-changing brain tumor. Now, at seventeen, Ali lives in a soundless world where she gets by with American Sign Language and lip-reading. She’s a constant disappointment to her father, a retired cop fighting his own … fighting his own demons, and the bruises are getting harder to hide.
When Ali accidentally wins a backstage tour with the chart-topping band Tone Deaf, she’s swept back into the world of music. Jace Beckett, the nineteen-year-old lead singer of the band, has a reputation. He’s a jerk and a player, and Ali wants nothing to do with him. But there’s more to Jace than the tabloids let on. When Jace notices Ali’s bruises and offers to help her escape to New York, Ali can’t turn down the chance at freedom and a fresh start. Soon she’s traveling cross-country, hidden away in Jace’s RV as the band finishes their nationwide tour. With the help of Jace, Ali sets out to reboot her life and rediscover the music she once loved.
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I almost stopped reading this at 20% or so. But it quickly got pretty cute, and Killer was adorably hilarious.
A few things that bothered me…
For as famous and popular as Tone Deaf supposedly is, they have a week in between each concert on their tour. Seemed a little odd to me.
Also, they have 2 or 3 different RVs? Jace had one all for himself, but the layout as described, with closed off rooms, sounded more like a tour bus (which is what they would have actually been touring with).
Here are some quotes that I found extremely pompous presumptions that seem non sequitur.
“… the way his wrist expertly flicks around the mouse tells me he’s experienced with computers. Strange. I didn’t think rock stars could be geeks.”
“Killer pushes his glasses up his nose in a practiced way that tells me he’s been wearing them forever,…”
My huge gripe… The way the author portrays Ali being deaf. If you want a good, accurate romance read with a deaf protagonist, I would highly recommend
The Silence Between Us by Alison Gervais. Tone Deaf was a half-baked attempt in my opinion. I don’t know much about being deaf or how things work, but some things just seemed contrived to me.
““Darling,” he finally says, his lips moving in a soft way that tells me he has a British accent,”
There really is no way to distinguish by lip reading if someone is saying darling with an accent, as the part that differs is how the tongue moves.
““We haven’t properly met.” His lips move slightly differently, and I can tell that he has a pretty strong accent.”
This, however, is accurate as the way the lips form “properly” differs.
And possibly the worst of all, this was narrated by the deaf girl.
“”We have six people who say differently.”“Six?” Everyone turns to me, and I realize I’m the one who blurted out the question.”
.. So… The deaf girl can’t hear herself, blurted our “six” and is surprised that it was her? When she can’t even hear it? So if she hadn’t said it, how did she think she would have known anyone had said it??
Just…. Go read The Silence Between Us. Accurate depictions of the actual dichotomy of ASL.
I stayed up all night to finish this book! It was fantastic! Incorporating sign language into a novel seems difficult and it was done flawlessly in this novel.
As soon as I finished reading Tone Deaf I wanted to recommend it to some of my book lover friends…then I realized what time it was! I had stayed up reading, losing track of time because I just got caught up in the story. It’s one of those books you would like to be able to check back with the characters in a few years to see how they’re doing.
Utterly predictable and frustrating. The relationship is between a 17-year-old girl and a 19-year-old boy, so the theme of “illegal” relationships keeps coming up, making their love “forbidden,” which is an overused an unnecessary aspect that is really just frustrating because there will obviously be a relationship.
I did read this in one sitting, though, wanting to finish it before I moved on.