The Lightning Bottles

One of my most anticipated books this fall was The Lightning Bottles by Marissa Stapley. Set in the Seattle grunge scenes of the 1990s, this dual-timeline novel is about star-crossed lovers—Elijah Hart and Jane Pyre—torn apart by fame and addiction. But when Elijah goes missing in Iceland in late 1994, Jane is forced to carry on without him. Five years later, a teen girl in Berlin may hold the clues that will finally lead Jane back to Elijah.

Tropes & Narrative Devices:

• Dual timeline
• Third-person narration

What I Liked:

• Alternative/Grunge music scene: First and foremost, The Lightning Bottles being about an alternative music group rising up during Seattle’s grunge era is what first captured my interest. I’m too young to have been into grunge at the time (I was a baby!), but I’m from the Seattle area and have since become a big fan of that era of music. Here, Jane and Elijah don’t identify with the grunge scene, but they’re still making alternative music that fits within that mood. I loved getting to see them write songs together, play shows, and rise up with albums and worldwide tours. It was also fun to see real bands, musicians, and producers mentioned throughout, from Mudhoney to Hole to Butch Vig. In other cases, real-life singers are refashioned into new characters, such as one that’s clearly inspired by Sinéad O’Connor.
• Music business and celebrity shadiness… especially for Jane. It’s well known that the entertainment world can be filled with toxicity, and this has certainly been true within the music industry. Jane faces a lot of unfair scrutiny and blatant sexism. A producer thinks she’s too difficult simply for wanting to record her parts of songs correctly. Their label doesn’t want the public to know that Jane writes and co-writes the songs. Industry types and fans alike paint Jane as some sort of horrible villain dragging Elijah down when it couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a lot to feel angry about her, but I mostly felt sad at how misunderstood and isolated Jane was.
• Discussions of addiction. Grunge musicians in the ’90s were often, unfortunately, heavily involved in drugs, most notoriously heroin. And indeed, both Elijah and Jane deal with their share of addiction: for him, it’s heroin, for her, it’s alcohol. I’ve seen how addiction can destroy people and those around them, and my heart went out to these two dealing with their issues via self-medication (and self-destruction).
• Critical look at religion. Jane comes from a very religious background, even having played in a church band. But Christianity didn’t do her any favors. I like the critical look at how religion put a chasm between Jane and her mom and was never there to save her in her time of need. How ironic.
• Parallels between Jane and Hen. Both Jane and the German teenager, Henrietta, have troubled relationships with their mothers. Both long for escape as teenagers, feeling drawn to music and a life of creative expression. When 27-year-old Jane meets 17-year-old Hen, there are clear similarities to Jane’s own past.

What Didn’t Work for Me:

• I went into this expecting a bit more of a mystery as Jane and Hen follow clues searching for Elijah. While that is an element of the book, the present timeline is actually pretty short and not as thrilling as I’d hoped. Instead, the book focuses more on all the buildup to Elijah’s disappearance—the fame, addictions, and increasing problems between him and Jane.

Final Thoughts

The Lightning Bottles is a somber but heartfelt look at a musical duo united by music yet destroyed by the fame it brings them. It’s a character study of a woman unfairly demonized, of two people struggling with addiction, and with the aftermath of it all. While there is an element of mystery as Jane and Hen search for Elijah, the main focus is on all the buildup before that. I loved falling into the music and getting to know these characters on this tragic journey.

Special thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Lightning Bottles here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

The Lightning Bottles by Marissa Stapley
Audiobook Narrator	Bahni Turpin
Audience	Adult
Genre	Mystery; Historical Fiction; Women’s Fiction
Setting	Ontario; Seattle; Los Angeles; Berlin; Paris; Iceland
Number of Pages	304
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC); Audiobook
Original Publication Date	September 24, 2024
Publisher	Simon & Schushter

Official Summary

The author of New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick Lucky returns with a spellbinding story of rock ‘n’ roll and star-crossed love—about grunge-era musician Jane Pyre’s journey to find out what really happened to her husband and partner in music, who abruptly disappeared years earlier.

He was the troubled face of rock ‘n’ roll…until he suddenly disappeared without a trace.

Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock ‘n’ roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she’s perhaps the most hated—and least understood—woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart—even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame, first in the Seattle grunge scene, then around the world.

But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band’s meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels, and all she wants to do is retreat. What she doesn’t anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenaged girl next door—a Lightning Bottles superfan—who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah still alive, he’s also been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find them right away.

A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, The Lightning Bottles is both a love letter to the 90s and a searing portrait of the cost of fame.