Review: A Song Only We Can Hear: A novel about cancer, music & love

A Song Only We Can Hear: A novel about cancer, music & love by Elliot Wake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After ten years away from the scene, Elliot Wake has returned at last with a new book that plays just a little bit lighter than the dark thrillers he was known for when he was getting started, but it's also got a foot in the well of black comedy and a foot in the well of relationship drama. Centering on a musical young man named Cam who's been struggling to break away from a very toxic relationship - his narcissistic influencer ex Tara being exactly the type to manipulate not only him, but also an entire social media following, painting herself as an abuser's victim in a perfectly infuriating example of DARVO - he's now dealing with cancer and chemo on top of everything else. Wake's previous books predate #MeToo, but this book incorporates it into the storyline as part of Tara's sinister social media grifting in ways that wouldn't be out of place in Black Iris or Bad Boy, and I'd be willing to bet Black Iris themselves would have their eye on Tara once they figure out the truth.

This book gets a lot of comparisons to The Fault in Our Stars and Silver Linings Playbook, but I'd say it's much more akin to We Live in Time, especially with Cam meeting the woman he'll truly fall in love with when she hits him with her car by accident. Turns out, Brynne and Cam have much in common, and it's not just the cancer and the chemo - Wake lets the mysteries and revelations trickle out at just the right pace to keep the reader guessing at every turn. And, as with Wake's earlier work, this one is very casually diverse in its cast of characters, with special mention going to Cam's best friend Ro - she casually refers to herself as a "Robot" because she's autistic, and yet, she's got infinitely more heart than Tara, who feels more evilly robotic with her emotion switches turning off and on at her own whims.

This one was personal for Wake, too, based on his description of events in the acknowledgments. So I'm not surprised that he subverted my initial fears from hearing about this book, and gave it a very different vibe of an ending than what I was expecting.

This is why I'll be going back to Wake's books again and again, for sure.

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