Retta Lee Jones is just a girl from the small town of Starling, hoping to make it in Nashville after she graduates high school. With $514.76 in savings and her great aunt’s 1987 Chevrolet Caprice Classic, Retta leaves her family, which includes her physically disabled father and her nagging mother, and heads to Nashville, where the first thing she does is get a parking ticket on Music Row. Arriving in the middle of Country Music Week, she drives miles in search of a motel, runs into a stone wall by the side of the road, and ends up working for the mechanic who comes to tow her car to the shop. Ricky Dean’s Auto Den is far from her dream job, and Retta valiantly attends open mike nights and sings at a failing hotel for senior citizens and tourists in an attempt to pursue her dream of music. Things are just starting to look up for Retta when her father calls to say that her mother has run off with the owner of the local Dollar King store.

As someone with a bit of knowledge about the music industry and how Nashville works, I know that this novel is an excellent portrayal of the ups and downs that musicians face. Retta learns things that many Nashville hopefuls already know — Deandra, a musician turned clothing store proprietor bitterly imparts many of these tidbits to her, such as “If it wasn’t for auto tune, half of Music City would have to pack up and go home.” Scattered between chapters are profiles of Nashville musicians such as Mary Chapin Carpenter, Hank Williams, Martina McBride, and Keith Urban, listing their previous jobs, big break, and life-changing events which impacted their career. The cover and title pages are attractively photographed and printed. An excellent read for music lovers and aspiring singer-songwriters. ( )

Now I totally want baby blue cowboy boots! :) ( )

3.5
This is one of those novels that is pleasant, undemanding, funny, enjoyable but still required a little something else to make it memorable. Perhaps it suffers from that unnamed condition that most "happy" realistic fiction books suffer from. If it's a real life setting and doesn't have fast-paced drama, a heart-breaking problem story, or some outrageous sex scandal then it isn't easy to hold the reader's attention - [b:Bunheads|10757749|Bunheads|Sophie Flack|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327882873s/10757749.jpg|10893887] is one rare example of a novel that does this. With that in mind, [b:Somebody Everybody Listens To|7129192|Somebody Everybody Listens To|Suzanne Supplee|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1276103912s/7129192.jpg|7391296] should be praised for not boring me.

If you like country music, as I do, you simply have to read this book. There's something about country music that speaks to a part of my heart, it's usually simplistic and beautiful, the twang in the tunes speaks of wide open meadows on a summer's day, with a pleasant breeze in the air and the smell of honeysuckle on the wind. For me, as someone who has grown up in a very urban environment, the countryside seems somewhat exotic. Think of the isolated and seemingly magical world of [b:Cider with Rosie|292314|Cider with Rosie|Laurie Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1330436427s/292314.jpg|1401317]. Beautiful. And this book pays homage to decades of country music artists.

And if you're not a fan of country? Well, this book is actually first and foremost about having a dream, a big dream. The kind of dream that you have to give up a whole part of your life to chase and still know in the back of your mind that the chances of you making it aren't that big. Do you go after what you've always wanted? How long do you put your life on hold to take a chance on something that might never happen? Even for someone like me who has always known that I would go to university, get a degree, and hopefully work my way up in a career like journalism or something similar... yeah, even for me this is something that interested me. Making big life choices, taking chances or playing it safe.

I also really like it when realistic fiction authors write novels about topics they have a lot of experience with. [a:Suzanne Supplee|858128|Suzanne Supplee|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1244569180p2/858128.jpg] spent years working for the Country Music Association in Nashville, Tennessee and her knowledge of the city, the business and the way nearly everyone in Nashville has come searching for the answer to that dream they have is evident throughout this book. The only thing I can actually say that I didn't like was a few occasions of casual slut-shaming. It's mild, it's a throwaway statement, I'm sure it meant nothing, but it's still there and it annoyed me. Otherwise, I highly recommend this novel for anyone looking for an easy-going teen read about a small town American girl with a dream so big she's just not sure what to do with it.
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Retta has dreams of making it big as a country music star in Nashville. After graduating from high school, she heads to the city to pursue a music career. Although she knew it would be difficult, Retta didn’t realize how hard it would be to break into the business, and when family drama calls her home, she begins to wonder if she should just give up her dream altogether.

Supplee begins each chapter of her book with a brief bio of a real country singer. I enjoyed Retta’s story, which was sweet without being nauseating, and had enough surprises in it to keep it from becoming too predictable. A quality addition to the “follow your dreams” genre. ( )

For Retta Lee Jones, the town of Starling, Tennessee has never been big enough to house her dreams. Fresh from high school graduation and sweating over a stove at a low-end diner job, Retta’s been talking about leaving town and heading to Nashville, guitar in hand, for as long as she can remember. But when push comes to shove, she isn’t sure she’s brave enough to leave Starling, her pucker-faced mama and quiet, hard-working daddy behind.

But at the prodding of her best friend Brenda, Retta is able to secure transporation (her elderly aunt’s old car) and a means to communicate (a cell phone shoved in her hand by Brenda). With little more than $500 in hand, Retta heads to Nashville to sing.

She’s grown up reading about all the pros, of course. Retta knows she can’t just waltz down to Music Row, busk for a while and suddenly get a contract. But she’s willing to do what she has to — including sleeping in her car — to try and make a name for herself . . . until fate might have other plans.

Suzanne Supplee’s Somebody Everybody Listens To is 18-year-old Retta’s story of digging deep and finding the courage to do the scary thing — the unsafe thing — even when everything in the world seems to be telling you not to attempt it.

The novel opens with a quote from country superstar Dolly Parton: “You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.” And bravery is a definite requirement of this adventure. A series of mishaps immediately make her life in Nashville harder, and the idea of a girl traveling to a city alone with so little cash and no real plan made my stomach churn. I’m a type-A obsessive worrier, see, and a planner. And Retta lacked a plan. How does one just hop into an old car, hit the open road and leave her family and friends behind her? The girl didn’t even have a place to sleep. And if it hadn’t been for Ricky Dean, a kind tow truck driver and mechanic, she’d have been unemployed, broke, beat-up and hopeless.

Basically, I spent the entire novel waiting for something terrible to happen to her. It seemed hopelessly naive that someone would just cruise into Nashville with nothing but their dreams and an old guitar to keep them going, but I guess people . . . do. It’s a world with which I’m not familiar, I’ll say that, but if Supplee’s writing about it, I’m going to assume young people head to Tennessee fueled only by ambition all the time.

I read (and adored) Supplee’s Artichoke’s Heart last year. Rosie, the narrator, was such a charming, real and relatable character — someone I loved and rooted for from day one. Unfortunately with her latest novel, I didn’t ever feel an emotional connection to Retta or feel invested in what happened to her. Part of me was actually angry, as I mentioned, that she’d be so cavalier and wanton, drifting where the wind — and her music — took her.

But maybe I’m just a dream destroyer.

Overall, a decent novel about ambition and never giving up, even when the odds are (more than) stacked against you. I wish I’d been more in tune with Retta, though I did enjoy reading about the “behind the scenes” aspects of the music industry — and a subplot involving her parents and the dreams they sacrificed added a little dimension to the story. But if you’re new to Supplee? Pick up Artichoke’s Heart first, one of my favorite reads of 2009. ( )