Of the three, this was my favorite. Rebels Without Applause and The Show Must Go On were both good reads and absolutely must be read together, but I think this one was more what I was expecting when I picked up the firs tone. This is a series of vignettes centered around Valentine’s Day and Halloween. They’re short, they’re adorable, and they don’t require knowing the entire backstory of those first two volumes.
My favorite of the stories was the Valentine’s Day story around Beckett. Who doesn’t love a bah humbug story with a happy ending? It didn’t hurt that Jory and Hunter were extra adorable.
Aside from this, the representation of diversity in these three short collections was incredible. There seems to be a lot of diversity that isn’t explicitly written (again maybe in the webcomics or somewhere else?), but I was even impressed they included a character with a hearing aid and din’t acknowledge it, just included it. It’s those types of small touches that make this genre stay ahead of others.
Recommendation: This is the one to read. The others were good, but the story was a little convoluted. These are just pure joyous interludes that you don’t necessarily need to know the backstories to enjoy.
1 thought on “Book 644: Encore (The Backstagers #3) – James Tynion IV, Rian Sygh & Walter Baiamonte”