Review: Hot Wax by M. L. Rio

🎸 RELEASE DATE: 9/9/2025

I about screamed when I opened my mail this morning to find a physical ARC of M. L. Rio's new novel (thank you so much to Simon Books!!!). I finished the eARC earlier this month, and I loved it so much. I'm glad to have this new trophy for my shelf 😍

🎸 MY REVIEW:

Wow. This was a wild ride (in the Ranchero) from start to finish and had such a satisfying ending.

The character development was UNREAL and I really got a sense for everyone in this story, even the smaller ones like Vince and Elko. Rio really has a way with writing that lets the reader capture every scene, every character, and every little detail perfectly in their mind. Hot Wax is no exception to that. I felt like I was there with Suzanne, through all the pieces of her life. My heart broke with her and for her.

It really felt like I was on the road with Gil and the Kills too, living vicariously through Suzanne like a groupie for a rock and roll band in the 80s. It wasn't all pretty, and Rio doesn't hold any punches getting to the nitty gritty of life on the road. Also, I SERIOUSLY hated Rob. And Skelly, because I felt betrayed by him at the end. He wasn't likeable to begin with, but something about his relationship with Suzanne really broke my heart after the big reveal.

TLDR: I LOVED this and I'll read anything M. L. Rio writes because she's incredibly talented.

🎸 SYNOPSIS:

The new novel from the bestselling author of If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift—a vivid and immersive tale of one woman’s reckless mission to make sense of the events that shattered her childhood, and made her who she is

Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills’ wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.

The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.

Drenched in knock-down drag-out rock and roll, Hot Wax is a raucous, breakneck ride to hell and back—where getting lost might be the only way to find yourself and save your soul.