Read. Write. Listen. Create.

I listened to my fair share of 90s and 2000s girl groups and boy bands back in the day (and I still do!) and this book brings back all the nostalgic bubblegum pop vibes. This book is “a coming-of-age story that follows the meteoric rise of singer Amber Young as she navigates fame in the late-1990s and early-2000s era of pop music superstardom.”

I gave this book four stars out of five. Isabel Banta captures the little nuances of the girl group and boy band reign in her debut novel; everything from describing a character eating a blue Baby Bottle Pop to Amber Young’s lyric pages in between chapters.

I also like how Banta included a thank you section in the book that was supposed to be where Amber Young would thank all her friends, producers, and writers along her journey making her album. It was exactly what was at the end of the CD cover jackets that came with a CD and what I would read first whenever I bought a new CD.

It is the year 1997 and Amber Young has received a call to join the girl group Cloud9. She’ll be able to escape her small town and move to Los Angeles. She finds herself among fellow rising stars, Gwen Morris and member of the biggest boy band in the world, Wes Kingston.

“As Amber embarks on her solo career and her fame intensifies, her rich interior life is frequently reduced. Surrounded by people who claim to love her but only wish to exploit her, and driven by a desire for recognition and success, for love and sex, for agency and connection, Amber comes of age at a time when the kaleidoscope of public opinion can distort everything and one mistake can shatter a career.”

I thought this book was beautifully written and captures what we realized was probably going on behind the scenes once we were old enough to understand more about the music industry. I kept coming across little nods to my two favorite decades that made this book addicting and so easy to get through. 100% would recommend if you grew up during the 90s and early 2000s and were (or are still) obsessed with girl groups and boy bands!