The Final Revival of Opal and Nev

"Most novels about popular music are bad. But author Dawnie Walton beats the curse with her story of a Black woman from Detroit, Opal Jewel, and a white Englishman, Nev Charles, who pair up and become an early-1970s sensation. Walton, a longtime arts journalist, goes granular and gets all the details right, whether it’s the particular accents of the British Invasion, the sleaze of the music business or the fabulosity of the industry’s designers who turned ordinary strivers into birds of paradise. The book is a tour de force structurally and, on the level of language, a total gas. Best is the character of Opal, an amalgam of real-life rock heroines like Nona Hendryx and Merry Clayton, whom Walton renders as utterly unique. This is the rock novel that owns the subgenre now."