Be Kind, Rewind by Melissa Brown

Be Kind, Rewind: A Spotlight Video Series Novel by Melissa Brown

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Closed door romance is not terribly romantic

2 Stars

What you need to know about “Be Kind, Rewind”:
✔ Retro Romance
✔ Dual Point of View
✔ Workplace Romance
✔ Naomi Parker, new employee at Spotlight Video
✔ Ben Watson, assistant manager at Spotlight Video
✔ “Sweet” Romance (kissing only)
✔ Enemies to Lovers Romance
✔ Spotlight Video #1
✔ Can be read as Complete Standalone

Naomi is starting her first real job at Spotlight Video. The year is 1994. She’s majoring in Musical Theater at Lurie University near Chicago and wants to be an actress.

Ben is the assistant manager at the video store and he takes his job seriously. He’s attracted to Naomi but some aspects of her personality frustrate him.

“Naomi flustered me, frustrated me, and left me speechless a lot of the time.”

The video store’s staff are all college students and it’s a campus store. The misfits that work at the store entertain their fair share of crushes, arguments, and pranks. I got a bit of an Empire Records vibe from the store and characters which is fitting I suppose as that movie came out in 1995.

Naomi and Ben run into each other at a frat party and she quickly realizes she doesn’t really know him.

The video store employees and others compare Naomi to the character Claire in The Breakfast Club and I’d have to agree – she’s not terribly likeable at this point in the book. She’s somewhat bratty, immature, and dramatic.

Both Naomi and Ben have other options for a relationship in the characters of Jamal and Jenn making this a “love square”. The high schoolish behavior of all of the characters made this supremely irritating for me.

There are also some errors in the book: misnaming a character, a sentence about Naomi being the only woman working at the store (what about Jenn and Marley?) and some confusion about whether Heather is helping her sick dad or her sick mom that make it seem amateurish at times.

Unfortunately, due to this, I was pretty much continuously irritated while reading this book.
Naomi and Ben finally have an honest conversation at 76% (!!) of the way into the book. Before that they are consistently spinning their wheels and there is a decided lack of romance.

As this takes place in a time of no smart phones, no social media, and no streaming media it was fun to read about pagers, pay phones and photographers at frat parties.

If you want to read a closed-door, retro romance with no spice and with more of an emphasis on the video store employees than the protagonists’ romance then this is the book for you.

I received an advance copy of this book and this is my honest opinion.

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Synopsis

She’s always dreamed of living her life in the spotlight. But for now, she’s just another college student working at Spotlight Video.

The year is 1994 and Naomi Parker has always dreamed of being in the movies. She’s hoping to make that dream a reality by enrolling in the best performing arts program the Midwest has to offer. But respected programs cost money…lots of it…and her scholarship will only go so far. To make ends meet, Naomi gets a job at the most popular video store on campus, Spotlight Video, and she quickly becomes part of its unique culture. There’s only one employee she can’t stand, the Assistant Manager, Buzzkill Ben.

Ben Watson is tired of the employee revolving door at Spotlight Video. He’s tired of people calling in sick, blowing off work, and treating the place like a bar with no cover charge. As the Assistant Manager, he works hard to balance work and school so that he can make something of himself when he graduates. There’s only one problem…he can’t get the newest employee out of his head. She’s just like all the others—she’s constantly late, doesn’t take things seriously and questions his authority. But she’s also nothing like the others, or anyone he’s ever met, and that’s the problem.

Will working closely together spark a romantic interest between these very different people, or will Ben be a buzzkill after all?

Meet Melissa Brown

Melissa Brown was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago and is told she has the accent to prove it. She’s also been told that she has an unhealthy obsession with pop culture. She speaks fluent movie quotes from the 1980s, reads celebrity gossip magazines and never misses an episode of Scandal.

She enjoys writing contemporary romance, romantic suspense and young adult novels.

All of Melissa’s books are currently available exclusively through Amazon.com and are part of the Kindle Unlimited Program.