Book Review: Perfect Cadence by Tamar Anolic

*Editorial Book Review*

PERFECT CADENCE

by Tamar Anolic

Publication Date: 15th December 2025
Publisher:  Independently published
Pages: 338
Genre: Music Industry Historical Fiction (Rock Drama)

Fame. Fortune. Pitfalls.

It is 1978, and a music scene is brewing in Los Angeles. Singer Gunnar Erickson and guitarist Shep Townsend leave Grand Island, Nebraska, hoping to make it big as rock stars. Before long, they help form the talented and popular band Authentic Cadence and are managed by the biggest names in the business.

As they begin to realize their dreams, however, Gunnar and Shep learn that that fame has its downsides. Between the constant touring and groupies and the traps of easy drugs, their fame also attracts toxic family members they thought were long gone. As one platinum album turns into another, Gunnar and Shep find themselves playing to large stadiums with a tough manager who won’t give them a break. Soon, both musicians feel like they are losing themselves entirely- and it will take a tragedy to change that.

I approached Perfect Cadence expecting a familiar rise-and-fall rock novel, but Tamar Anolic delivers something more intimate and grounded, using the scaffolding of fame to explore identity, loyalty, and the erosion of self. Set against the volatile Los Angeles music scene of 1978, the novel follows Gunnar Erickson and Shep Townsend, two young musicians who leave Grand Island, Nebraska with little more than talent, ambition, and a shared dream of stardom. Their bond—equal parts brotherhood and creative partnership—forms the emotional backbone of the story from its opening pages.

Once in Los Angeles, opportunity arrives swiftly. Gunnar’s voice and Shep’s guitar work help propel the formation of Authentic Cadence, a band whose name quickly becomes synonymous with both commercial and critical success. The early chapters capture the intoxicating momentum of discovery: small venues give way to packed clubs, industry figures circle, and the machinery of fame begins to grind into motion. Anolic vividly renders the seduction of success—the first influential manager, the first platinum album, the first taste of a life lived at full volume.

As Authentic Cadence ascends, however, the costs of that ascent begin to accumulate. Constant touring frays personal boundaries, groupies and drugs blur lines of agency, and the band’s powerful manager exerts increasing control over their lives. Fame becomes a magnet not only for excess, but for unresolved pasts. Toxic family members resurface, sensing opportunity in Gunnar and Shep’s success, and old wounds are reopened in ways neither man is equipped to manage. The novel steadily darkens as the musicians find themselves playing to vast stadiums while feeling more isolated than ever, their original love of music distorted by obligation and exhaustion. When tragedy finally strikes, it functions less as a plot twist than as an inevitable reckoning—forcing both men to confront what they have sacrificed in the pursuit of perfection.

In the second half of my reading experience, what stood out most was Anolic’s restraint. Rather than glamorising excess or indulging in sensationalism, the novel treats fame as a slow, corrosive force. The prose is clean and purposeful, allowing emotional weight to build through accumulation rather than melodrama. Gunnar and Shep are not mythologised rock gods; they remain recognisable, flawed men whose vulnerabilities make their unravelling compelling rather than performative.

That said, Perfect Cadence is at its strongest when it remains focused on the internal lives of its protagonists. Some secondary characters—particularly within the music industry—lean towards archetype, serving more as embodiments of systemic pressure than as fully realised individuals. Even this, however, works thematically, reinforcing how fame flattens human complexity into roles and transactions. The manager’s relentlessness, for instance, is less a matter of villainy than of the inescapable logic of profit-driven success.

Ultimately, I found Perfect Cadence to be a thoughtful meditation on ambition and identity. Anolic understands that the true tragedy of fame is not collapse, but drift—the gradual loss of self that occurs while everything appears to be going right. By anchoring the narrative in friendship and shared history, the novel resists cynicism and instead offers a sobering, humane portrait of what it costs to be heard at the loudest possible volume.

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Tamar Anolic

Tamar is a writer who writes in multiple genres. Her short stories have been published in many literary journals. Her most recent novel, A Summer Lasts Forever, is a young adult coming-of-age novel that takes place in Bennington, Vermont.

Tamar's legal thriller, This Side of the Law, takes place in the bowels of Brooklyn, New York, where city and federal prosectors clash as their careers hang in the balance. Tamar is also the author of Like Water and Ice, which follows figure skater Thad Moulton as he trains for the Olympics.

Tamar's short story collection The Lonely Spirit follows half-Comanche Marshal L.S. Quinn across the Old West. This book won an Indie Brag Medallion, was a winner for Historical Fiction in the Firebird Book Awards, was long listed for the Historical Fiction Company's Book of the Year Awards, and received the “Highly Recommended” award of excellence from the Historical Fiction Company. It also won first place (best in category) in the Chanticleer International Book Awards for short story collections and novellas. The Lonely Spirit is now available in audiobook format.

Tamar's novel in short stories, Tales of the Romanov Empire, was short listed for the Goethe Awards for Late Historical Fiction, and long listed for the Historical Fiction Company's Book of the Year Awards. Her other novels about the Romanovs include the alternate history series Triumph of a Tsar, Through the Fire, and The Imperial Spy. These three books are set in a world where the Russian Revolution is avoided and the hemophiliac Alexei becomes tsar.

Tamar's military fiction includes her first novel, The Last Battle, about a female veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Tamar also wrote The Vanguard Warrior Trilogy, a science fiction series about a gene that runs in military families and causes superpowers. The first book is The Fledgling’s Inferno, where cadet Katie McMann of Norwich University becomes the first woman to have the gene. A Silent Evil follows Deion Carter at Valley Forge Military Academy. In The Final Armada, twin cadets Gael and Isadora Perez at Texas A&M must decide which side they fight for.

Tamar's YA contemporary novel is Two Sisters of Fayetteville. Her MG fantasy is The Tunnel to Darkness and Light, and its prequel, The Keepers, is one of Tamar's more recent novels.