Book Review — A Wish For Us by Tillie Cole

A Wish For Us.

A story of music.
A story of healing.
A story of love conquering all.

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Oh my gosh, this was the most BEAUTIFUL book!! I read it straight through in one sitting and it was AMAZING!! A truly unique and EMOTIONAL LOVE STORY that brought music and colors to life in a way that blew me away. I COULD NOT STOP READING! It was a BEAUTIFUL and HEALING romance. I highly, highly recommend it!

Nineteen-year- old Cromwell Dean is the rising star of electronic dance music. Thousands of people adore him. But no one knows him. No one sees the color of his heart. Until the girl in the purple dress. She sees through the walls he has built to the empty darkness within.

When Cromwell leaves behind the gray skies of England to study music in the South Carolina heat, the last thing he expects is to see her again. And he certainly doesn’t expect that she’ll stay in his head like a song on repeat.

Bonnie Farraday lives for music. She lets every note into her heart, and she doesn’t understand how someone as talented as Cromwell can avoid doing the same. He’s hiding from his past, and she knows it. She tries to stay away from him, but something keeps calling her back.

Bonnie is the burst of color in Cromwell’s darkness.
He’s the beat that makes her heart skip.

But when a shadow falls over Bonnie, it’s up to Cromwell to be her light, in the only way he knows how. He must help her find the lost song in her fragile heart. He must keep her strong with a symphony only he can compose.

A symphony of hope.
A symphony of love.
A symphony of them.

Okay now I know that the first question that most of you are going to ask me is whether this book has a happy ending — it was definitely the first question I asked too, so I get it. I’ll post the answer in a spoiler link below:

 
Cromwell Dean is the epitome of a tormented bad boy hero. Tattoed. Pierced. Famous. Private. Sullen. Sexy. Angry. Talented beyond all reason. He had it all and yet his life felt empty. Something had happened that had taken all the joy out of his life and his music. And it wasn’t until a chance encounter brought Bonnie into his life that any of that began to change.

She went quiet.

I caught her looking at me. Her brown eyes were narrowed, like she was scrutinizing me. Reading something in me that I didn’t want anyone to see.

No one ever looked at me closely. I never gave them the chance. I thrived on the podium at clubs because it kept everyone far away, down on the dance floor where no one ever saw the real me.

They were complete opposites in so many ways, but when a college project paired them together and forced them to co-write music for the semester, their world’s became unchangeably entwined.

It’s not an easy task to describe music with words alone, but Tillie Cole did it wish such beautiful writing that it felt like you could hear and FEEL everything even though there was no real sound at all.

The club pulsed as the beat I was pouring into the crowd took over their bodies. Arms in the air, hips swaying, eyes wide and glazed as my music slammed into their ears, the rhythmic beats controlled their every move. The air was thick and sticky, clothes slick to people’s skins as they crammed into the full club to hear me.

I watched them light up with color. Watched them get lost in the sound. Watched them shed whoever they’d been that day — an office worker, a student, a copper, a call-center worker — what the fell ever. Right now, in this club, they were slaves to my tunes. Right here, in this moment, my music was their life.

Cromwell saw music as colors and saw beauty few other people ever could, and yet his talent was also hiding a pain so raw that it had taken all the heart and soul from his music. Bonnie made it her mission to help him find it again.

He looked like the epitome of arrogate, rolling his tongue ring against his teeth. He was dressed in black jeans that had a chain hanging from the waist, and a simple white shirt with a low neck and tick short sleeves that gripped his muscled biceps. His tattoos climbed like vines up his arms and neck.

Some people would think them art.
I thought they looked like they were strangling him.

It broke my heart to see how desperately he craved that healing but how his demons pushing everyone away from him. He needed her, but couldn’t stand that he needed her.

The thought of working with Bonnie made an uneasy feeling sprout inside me. I didn’t like to feel anything. I was happy numb. But for some reason Bonnie Farraday sparked life back into my dead soul.

They couldn’t have been more opposite. She was sunshine and he was a storm cloud. But they shared a deep love for music and for a while, that was their only connection. Until that connection slowly deepened. The more time they spent together, the more he slowly began to trust her with his deepest secrets and show her his world. But no matter how broken his secrets made him, nothing prepared him for the devastation of hers.

When you’re writing a hero who acts like a bit of a jerk, there’s a delicate balance between forgivable actions and going too far. I also feel it’s really important to give some kind of believable and justifiable reason for their actions. And I really felt like this book did a fantastic job of that. Learning of what Cromwell had been through and what kinds of demons he was fighting, it really made his behavior at the very least understandable. His secrets were deep and crushing and even the best of people can be brought low by that kind of pain.

I had seen to many performances in my lifetime, yet none had compared to the rawness of what I had heard tonight. I followed the fingers dancing like birds on a lake. My eyes tracked up a pair of tattooed arms, over a white sleeveless shirt, over stubble-dark cheeks and silver piercings.

Then they locked on a single teardrop. A falling drop that rolled down the tanned cheek to splash on the ivory keys that were pouring with the sounds of pain and hurt and regret.

My chest was stricken, reacting to the wordless story the music was telling. As I started at Cromwell’s face, it was like seeing it for the first time. Gone was the arrogance and the anger he wore like a shield. The shield was lowered, and a boy I didn’t recognize was laid bare.

I loved the way this author portrayed his character and how she really brought the reader into his world. While this is a duel POV book, in many ways this felt to me like it was Cromwell’s story and when Bonnie came into his life, it was like this saving grace that allowed him to oh so slowly feel again, love again, and connect with his music.

“I saw him kiss you… and I see the way you look at him… And the way he looks at you.”
“How?”
“Like you’re his air. Like you’re the water to whatever hellfire lives inside him.”

Bonnie’s strength and perseverance and the way she saw right through Cromwell’s pain and knew that there was something he was hiding inside that she needed to get to and that she needed to help heal was really beautiful. I loved the way she didn’t give up on him – except that one time briefly, but I think we can all understand why.

“Cromwell doesn’t speak much with his voice, but he screams what he feels with melodies and notes and the change of keys.”

I’m not a big fan of comparing book, in fact I avoid it at all costs as a general rule but I will quietly mention that I do believe that if you were a fan of Beautiful Disaster, then you’ll definitely love this book. It’s not the same story at all, but just something about the feeling of the dynamic between Cromwell and Bonnie reminded me a little of the feeling I had when reading BD all those years ago.

I swear to you I read the second half of this book without stopping to breathe or blink. I was just glued to the page and couldn’t read fast enough. I just devoured the story needing them to be okay.

And omg, THE FEELS!!!!! The letter! The music! Their love! So many feels!

This was a truly beautiful book! I loved it and highly recommend it as a top favorite of the year!

Rating: 4.5+ STARS!! Contemporary NA Romance, can standalone.

• Buy A WISH FOR US (Kindle)
• Buy A WISH FOR US (Paperback)
• Buy A WISH FOR US (iBooks)