Kill the boy band by Goldy Moldavsky

Title: Kill the boy band

Author: Goldy Moldavsky

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 320

Source: NetGalley

Genre: Young Adult

Rating: 1

The plot:

5 fangirls have always loved the Rupert’s. They are Strupers dedicated to promoting the band and to try and meet them. Sometimes love and obsession can start to blur. Sometimes right and wrong can fade into the background of 140 characters. Follow the journey of  how fangirls can love a boy band to death.

My Experience:

♪ Somebody save me ♪ (Smallville theme song thundering in the background).

My gut told me not to read this. It told me I would regret it but the fangirl in me screamed at me, strangling me screeching: “Snow you will read this and there will be no buts!”

So I did. Never listen to the fangirl, listen to the gut. The gut knows.

The first 3 pages had me interested and showed great potential for this novel to be a critical satire and maybe a realistic documentary of sorts.

I kind of imagined this:

And if you look closely you will now see a fangirl in her natural habitat. You might think they are busy  screaming mindlessly but in fact, they are communicating their love for their pack and their pack leaders.

Okay, I kid, I did not expect that but that would have been funny, way funnier than what I was forced to endure.

My thoughts while reading this book:

 “Uhm … okay?”

“You are kidding, right?”

“I’m starting to feel a bit nauseous…”

I am going to now explain all the faults I found with this book. To minimize the ranting and keep this review shorter than 5 pages I will list them numerically:

1. The story felt fake. I am very active on social media. I myself have been through serious fan girl stages. I have cried about a tweet and I have screamed about a song.  I know the life of a fangirl. However, I also moved on from the fangirl world. Therefore, I am unbiased. This story seemed so staged. The characters felt like they were the result of a bag of research and quiz results. Not written by someone who has ever been a fangirl. Not that there would be something wrong with not having been a fangirl ever but if you are going to write about them, I do expect them to feel real.

2. The characters were annoying and there was no depth. Their motives for doing what they wanted to do was weak and they earned many, many eye rolls.

3. The history of the band. They were formed on a popular TV show, becoming the most famous band in the world with millions of adoring fans ready to kill… Sound familiar? Maybe a boy band called One Direction? I don’t know...

4. If the history was not bad enough. The name of the show was: "So You think the British Don't have Talent?" I'll just leave that there.

5. The main character was weak, boring and seemed to feel sorry for herself over almost everything. The conclusions she made and the sudden paradigm shifts happening in seconds made her a very wishy-washy character.

6. The author tried to villainize certain people in this story so that you could feel that in the end, these people had it coming. But it just made you more annoyed with the main characters and their petty excuses. There was nothing to like about them. They were selfish, catty, self-conceited, vain, annoying, rude, ungrateful spoiled brats (You can see that I had a slight dislike for the characters.)

7. The way the author feels about fangirls is seeping through the pages and it’s basically trying to subtly tell you, how fan girls are blinded by an idea a glamorized lie. They are hoping though if the main characters realize this through forced events we will come to the same conclusion. Fangirls are wasting their time.

What I liked:

*Thinks very hard*

I guess in the end it kept me curious, despite all the flaws. How would it end?

So even though it was sometimes painful to read I kept reading because I wanted to know what would happen. I was also hoping that something bad would happen to all the main characters.

What I did not like:

Despite all the many flaws I have already mentioned you mean?

The story was unrealistic. Absolutely unrealistic. The surrealism was like a punch in the gut for me and it made it feel like I was reading a badly written fan fiction.

My rating:

The ending is the only thing that could have redeemed this book from a low rating.

However, that hope has melted. The ending was inconclusive and it seemed as if the author did not really know what they wanted to say. Just the fact that to be a fan girl is a phase. 

I give this book one melting snowflake.

/ 5

-Snow