3.5
August Lane
ByPublisher Description
An instant USA Today bestseller
An NPR 2025 Book We Love
A New York Times Notable Book of 2025
A Book Riot Best Book of 2025
A Publishers Weekly Best Romance Book of 2025
A Chicago Public Library 2025 Must-Read Romance
For fans of Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter and The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, a Southern small-town romance about the visibility of Black women’s voices in country music, and “the best romance I’ve read all year.” (The New York Times).
Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing “Another Love Song.” God, he hates that song. But performing his lone hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. Following another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol—90’s era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who’s being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small hometown he swore he’d never see again. Going back means facing a painful past of abuse and neglect. It also means facing JoJo’s daughter, August Lane—the woman who wrote the lyrics he’s always claimed as his own.
August also hates that song. But she hates Luke Randall even more. When he shows up ten years too late to apologize for his betrayal, she isn’t interested in making amends. Instead, she threatens to expose his lies unless he co-writes a new song with her and performs it at the concert, something she hopes will launch her out of her mother's shadow and into a songwriting career of her own. Desperate to keep his secret, Luke agrees to put on the rogue performance, despite the risk of losing his shot at a new record deal.
When Luke’s guitar reunites with August’s soulful alto, neither can deny that the passionate bond they formed as teenagers is still there. As the concert nears, August will have to choose between an overdue public reckoning with the boy who betrayed her, or trusting the man he’s become to write a different love song.
An NPR 2025 Book We Love
A New York Times Notable Book of 2025
A Book Riot Best Book of 2025
A Publishers Weekly Best Romance Book of 2025
A Chicago Public Library 2025 Must-Read Romance
For fans of Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter and The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, a Southern small-town romance about the visibility of Black women’s voices in country music, and “the best romance I’ve read all year.” (The New York Times).
Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing “Another Love Song.” God, he hates that song. But performing his lone hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. Following another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol—90’s era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who’s being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small hometown he swore he’d never see again. Going back means facing a painful past of abuse and neglect. It also means facing JoJo’s daughter, August Lane—the woman who wrote the lyrics he’s always claimed as his own.
August also hates that song. But she hates Luke Randall even more. When he shows up ten years too late to apologize for his betrayal, she isn’t interested in making amends. Instead, she threatens to expose his lies unless he co-writes a new song with her and performs it at the concert, something she hopes will launch her out of her mother's shadow and into a songwriting career of her own. Desperate to keep his secret, Luke agrees to put on the rogue performance, despite the risk of losing his shot at a new record deal.
When Luke’s guitar reunites with August’s soulful alto, neither can deny that the passionate bond they formed as teenagers is still there. As the concert nears, August will have to choose between an overdue public reckoning with the boy who betrayed her, or trusting the man he’s become to write a different love song.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesAugust Lane Reviews
3.5
“4.5⭐️
I LOVED 🥰 this story!!! The plot, the love, the anguish, the hostility, and the lies all made this story. All the emotions pulled you in and made you feel for each character. It has some hard triggers so please check first.”
“Absolutely ate this up, finished in 2 days”
“This book is well written, but I struggled with the romance. I think it’s mostly that the dynamic between Luke and August isn’t what I prefer. This book deals with MANY heavy themes (alcoholism and other substance use disorders, child abuse, child neglect, dementia, bullying, etc.), and while I think those were handled with a lot of sensitivity and compassion, the way they intersected with the romance didn’t always work for me.
The major conflict of the book is that Luke left August and never came back, then got famous singing a song that she wrote. That is a very juicy conflict, but there are two issues I had with it. One is that it took way too long, in my opinion, to find out what exactly Luke did. The other is that when we do find out, the stuff that happened isn’t really Luke’s fault. In a romance, I like the conflict to stem from choices the characters made that they really need to own. Like, Luke DID make mistakes, but they’re not explored as much as they could be, nor is his inner anguish, though we’re told he felt it. The mistakes that the book dwells on are not the mistakes I felt Luke needed to atone for. And the events that put him in a position to make mistakes are really not his fault at all—he was abused, and he had to escape. So I just didn’t feel that Luke needed to beat himself up as much, and that made his arc less compelling to me.
Luke is also incredibly kind and soft even though life has hardened him somewhat. He’s never mean to August. And I know it’s a tough look for me but I just want the guys in my romances to be a little toxic lol. August is the one who’s mean and prickly, though it doesn’t last long.
Idk, I think there was too much going on in the book to linger on the characters’ anguish and yearning throughout their adulthood as much as I would have liked. Instead, half the book is spent on their blooming high school relationship. I’m not big on spending a lot of time in childhood/high school in romance novels—the lack of agency inherent in being a kid just makes it less fun for me to read about. I also have a hard time suspending my disbelief when high school-aged characters are saying incredibly profound, mature things to each other. Maybe you all were a lot smarter and emotionally developed in high school but I was not saying things like that back then, lol.
I was interested in both Luke and August as characters, but I didn’t feel as strongly about their relationship with each other. Still an enjoyable read and Regina Black is a great writer.”
About Regina Black
Regina Black is a former civil litigator, current law school administrator, and life long romance reader who has always been passionate about the depiction of Black women in popular culture. She currently resides in Little Rock, Arkansas with her husband and daughter.
Other books by Regina Black
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