Just Say No!

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Childhood playmates in North Carolina, John Williams and Darin Harmon grow up as best friends and friendly competitors. Not surprisingly, they go off to college together, each accepting a scholarship to North Carolina A&T State University. However, during their sophomore year, these African-American brothers begin to go their separate ways when John parlays his success at a homecoming talent show into coast-to-coast fame as a rhythm and blues singer. Friendship and the high price of success are the subjects of this cautionary tale.

Publishers Weekly

The pitfalls of success swallow up a young soul singer in Tyree's latest, a buddy story about a pair of African-Americans from North Carolina who rocket to stardom together after leaving college to enter the music business. Darin Harmon is the narrator, a college football prospect who sees his career go up in smoke after an injury and decides to manage his best friend, a talented singer and musician named John Williams. Williams comes from a church music background, but when he starts singing and writing songs, the romantic "Loverboy" persona he invents quickly lands him a record deal, a concert tour and a series of bestselling singles and albums. Williams can't resist temptation, though, and his problems start with pot addiction and slowly progress to include increasingly dangerous sexual adventures, leaving Harmon with the dubious task of trying to keep his best friend's hedonism under the media radar. Eventually Harmon tires of Williams's antics, and when he quits to get married, raise a family and become a producer, the pace of Loverboy's slide accelerates until he finally lands in a Maryland halfway house after a drug arrest. Tyree narrates the somewhat predictable story at a slick, superficial level, relying on at least a dozen rather redundant sex scenes to keep the plot moving, although he does delve briefly into Williams's troubled relationship with his extremely religious but hypocritical mother. The sex, drugs and rock-and-roll angle will seem familiar to white readers, but Tyree's major contribution here is framing Williams' efforts in the context of other soul, rap and R&B artists to produce an informative and entertaining variation on a formulaic music yarn. (Aug.) Forecast:Tyree's books are tried-and-true crowd-pleasers, and the music-themed plot of his latest a Black Expressions main selection and a Literary Guild, Doubleday and Quality Paperback alternate selection should attract an even larger audience than usual. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Darin Harmon and John Williams struggle to preserve their lifelong friendship after John achieves musical superstardom. The two boys meet in grade school and eventually attend the same African American college on scholarships Darin for football and John for music. John's smooth R&B performance at a college talent show wows the crowd and earns him the nickname "Loveboy." When he decides to quit school and devote himself to music full time, he asks Darin to be his business manager. As John becomes more and more successful, the two young men succumb to the usual pitfalls of success sex and drugs. Will they stop their downward slide before it's too late? Libraries with a strong Tyree following can safely purchase the well-narrated (by the author) abridged version; the formulaic plot runs a bit thin in the almost 20-hour unabridged program read by William A. Quinn. Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib., OH Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Tedious, overwritten account of the rise and inevitable fall of an African-American musician. Beginning in the mental institution where John "Loverboy" Williams is now being held, the narrative slips back to the beginning, when John and Darin first met. Narrator Darin tells of the pity he felt for mamma's boy John and how he made it his childhood priority to look out for the awkward, studious kid. The two grow up, Darin becomes a popular athlete and John a gifted musician, and both win scholarships to the same college for their respective talents. Here the story veers into the realm of fairy tale. John makes such a hit at the college's talent show that he's invited to play at another college for money. His smooth vocal stylings earn him the moniker "Loverboy," and with his overnight popularity come throngs of women to validate the name. He decides to drop out of college, and Darin, whose dream of playing for the NFL has been ended by an injury, comes along as his manager. They break into the big time presto bismo: John cuts an album, knocks 'em dead on tour, and becomes a national celebrity. By now, of course, he's also a compulsive womanizer and a drug addict. Darin tries to restrain John's masochistic urges, but he too gets hooked on easy money and fame. John's personal life continues to deteriorate-the relationship with his pious mother becomes strained, and he's thrown by the discovery of the father he never knew, a married man his mother had an affair with-but his music is more popular than ever. "He's a star!" Darin, learning the error of his wicked ways, quits managing, gets married, and goes back to college, but he can't give up trying to save John from himself.Though fullof good intentions and some fresh observations about race, Tyree's (For the Love of Money, 2000, etc.) monotonously detailed prose limits the appeal of this cautionary tale. Clumsy and predictable.