Colton Gentry’s Third Act: Surprisingly Enjoyable

I will openly admit that I did not go into this book expecting much of it. After spending so much time reading Tolstoy, I wanted an easy read. Something that I didn’t have to think too hard about, that I could open in the morning during breakfast and not have to stop and think about (or re-read) every two sentences. After reading the synopsis of this story, I thought “ah I probably won’t enjoy this but it seems like it will be an easy thing to breeze through.” I suppose the old addage “don’t judge a book by its cover” holds true here, because I both enjoyed this story more than I thought I would, and found more in its message than I originally thought I would (although it still was an easy read).

I’d like to start by noting that the synopsis of this book (as with all modern books it seems) does a strong disservice to its narrative and characters, not to mention the author. On the surface, Colton Gentry’s Third Act is about an alcoholic country star getting cancelled for protesting gun violence at a show. He then has to clean his life up and find his new way in the world. But all of this happens within the first couple of chapters, and the story really starts when he comes back to his hometown and actually has to start living again. It is in these early chapters where we actually get to know Colton: his relationship with alcohol while sobering up, his feelings of insecurity and ineptitude, his struggles with grief and love. There are some genuinely heartwrenching moments early on that make me want to root for the guy, to see his life get better and to have a happy ending (which it thankfully does).

I’d also like to praise the author’s use of different time perspectives. Now, I recently criticized another book for constantly zipping between times and characters (which you can read here if you’d like), but that book struggled in terms of its focus and scope. Here, we only ever follow Colton and a few other core characters back and forth, which makes it not only easier to follow but build up the readers relationship with them over time. What I think it particularly brilliant about the way the author does this here is that you get glimpses of Colton’s past in the first half of the book, which culminates in his telling of his first heartbreak, which is a major plot point for the story. Once we reach that point, however, we no longer dwell on the past: we stay with Colton in the present and move onto his future. This was a lovely use of multiple time points in a plot that actually helps the reader understand its characters and world, rather than doing it for the sake of doing it.

Unfortunately, there are a number of things to criticize in the book, one of the major ones being Colton in the latter half. There are some points where I found him to be extremely frustrating and made choices that showed he had learned nothing from the time when he was a teenager. When he turns his back on his third chance, for instance, I found this unreasonably frustrating, as it was not in line with his character anymore (or at least I thought so). I will give props to the author for making one of Colton’s only friends in the story at that point call him stupid and highlight everything that I was thinking, but I still think it added unnecessary drama that was out of line with his character. It is also extremely obvious from the first few conversations that Colton and his high school sweetheart have the hots for each other, but the book makes you wait for so long for that payoff. I get it, build suspense, but if you’re going to build it at least make it more believable that there’s a chance Colton can blow it. Which, coincidentally, Colton never really does. He comes close, but he’s always instantly good at the things he does, to the point where I’m a little jealous. When he gets hired to be a chef at a high-end restaurant, on his first shift his idea is approved to go on the menu. I get that he had some experience with fine dining as a country star, but given his alcoholic tendencies I’m skeptical his palatte would be anything but average.

Another thing that I personally didn’t like was a lot of the hand-waving that the author does with regards to music, sports and cooking, Colton’s three main things in the book. He was a football star in High School in the past sections of the book, and I will give the author a slight pass on this given that those sections were meant to personalize the readers to the characters. But we never get any lyrics for Colton’s “big hit”, and even fewer details on Colton’s songwriting ability (despite making it in Nashville, which is extremely difficult). As well, while the author will spend paragraphs writing food items on the menu, they aren’t really described much and it isn’t explained how much of it Colton had a hand in cooking. We are always told that Colton is great, never shown, which is a really big letdown as a reader.

The book also suffers from a bit of what I will call “21st century writing,” characterized by the author, editor, or both, constantly referring to the thesaurus for words. As an example, during a high school dance some of the football boys are making homophobic remarks to another guy who they presume is gay (this is never confirmed but likely untrue), and rather than “chuckling to themselves” or “snickering behind his back”, they are described as, and I quote: “guffawing heterosexually.” On the off chance anyone cares enough about my opinion on writing, I’ll say this: using bigger/alternative words doesn’t make your writing better, it just makes it sound silly or loses the reader. There are unfortunately many descriptive cases similar to “guffawing heterosexually” throughought the book, which I tended to roll my eyes at rather than appreciate.

Overall, while there were some flaws I overall really enjoyed this book. I think the author understands how to write an emotionally gripping character driven story, and if they focused even more on that I think this could have been even better.

Verdict: 3/5