Filler Faves: The Comeback

Unlike most of the others, The Comeback was actually pretty successful.  Probably because I did a Goodreads giveaway back when those were still free and some other stuff to promote it harder than other books.

Most of the reviews were good, which is nice because it's also my favorite Eric Filler book--to date.  It's really more of a romance than an erotica story and more literary than a lot of the Eric Filler stories.

I had a little fun at the start by setting it in Auburn, Michigan, which is a real place though I took a few liberties.  A washed-up hair metal singer/guitarist named Alex Axx is supposed to appear at the "Corn Festival" that night but first he gets drunk and screws a middle-aged woman.  So that night when he has to perform he winds up taking a nasty fall off the stage.

When Alex wakes up he's in a hospital in the middle of Lake Michigan.  It's really more of a prison than a hospital.  Anyway, he's injected with an experimental drug that turns him into a 16-year-old girl.

This new Alex has to adjust to her new body and get some strength back.  As she does, she meets some of the other patients there.  One girl named Sandra takes a shine to her and encourages her to play guitar and sing in their little band for a talent show.  As they practice for that Alex and Sandra fall madly in love and start sneaking off to the janitor's closet to make out.

But just after winning the talent show, Alex is forced to leave the island by her former manager now her legal guardian.  Her "mom" has signed her up for an American Idol-type show as Alex Axelrod.  Soon Alex finds that instead of a hardcore rocker she's become a teen idol.

As she's rising to stardom again, Sandra visits her to encourage her to run away together, but Alex refuses.  Sandra leaves and Alex is heartbroken.  Then she's reunited with another girl from the hospital/prison named Dakota who's to be her new social media coordinator since Alex doesn't really know much about Twitter, Facebook, and so on.

Dakota shows Alex a young fan on Twitter who's dying of cancer, which helps Alex see the plus side of her new life.  She goes to visit the girl in the hospital, but is heartbroken again a few days later when she finds out the girl died.

Meanwhile Alex has made it to the top 6 on the TV show and it looks very likely she'll win the whole thing.  She and Dakota are starting to fall in love and Dakota reveals that she took the same drug Alex did.

Before the last episode of the TV show, though, Alex goes to Dakota's room to find she's dying.  The drug that turned Dakota into a girl is breaking down and causing severe problems.  Ultimately Dakota passes away and yet again Alex is heartbroken.

She goes on stage for the final episode and sings a song she wrote for Dakota.  Afterwards, Alex sneaks out of the building to run away.  And who does she soon run into but Sandra!  Sandra has been watching her career with keen interest and hoped to meet her again.

This time Alex decides to run away with Sandra.  In the epilogue Alex is playing folk guitar on the streets of Seattle.  The music is no longer about money or fame or glory; she's doing it purely for the love of it now.  She and Sandra are still together, surviving thanks to Sandra's job at Starbucks (the original Starbucks) and hush money from Alex's "mom."  And they live happily ever after...maybe.

So it's a nice story.  There's not a lot of sex to appease the "Bear Hunter" types but it's a nice romantic story about overcoming loss and heartbreak and finding redemption.  The parts where Alex visits the little girl with cancer and later sits by Dakota's bed as she's dying I channeled a little bit of the grief from my sister dying that year so the story is also a bit personal for me, which is probably another reason I like it.

But it's always nice when me and the readers can both like something and it sells pretty well too.  That's a win-win-win I guess.

Like Casting Change, this is one where even if you don't like gender swap stories you might still be able to enjoy it.