Publisher Website - Scholastic
Publisher Social Media - Twitter
Pages - 320 pages
My Rating - 5/5
**received for honest review from the publisher**
From debut author Goldy Moldavsky, the story of four superfan friends whose devotion to their favorite boy band has darkly comical and murderous results.Four fangirls, and a kidnapped boy band member. What could possibly go wrong? Kill The Boy Band is a sharp, darkly funny look at fangirls, and the power a fandom can hold. It's addictive, and shines a bright spotlight on society's tendency to underestimate anything teens, particularly teen girls, are passionate about.
Okay, so just know from the start that it wasn't supposed to go like this. All we wanted was to get near The Ruperts, our favorite boy band.
We didn't mean to kidnap one of the guys. It kind of, sort of happened that way. But now he's tied up in our hotel room. And the worst part of all, it's Rupert P. All four members of The Ruperts might have the same first name, but they couldn't be more different. And Rupert P. is the biggest flop out of the whole group.
We didn't mean to hold hostage a member of The Ruperts, I swear. At least, I didn't. We are fans. Okay, superfans who spend all of our free time tweeting about the boys and updating our fan tumblrs. But so what, that's what you do when you love a group so much it hurts.
How did it get this far? Who knows. I mean midterms are coming up. I really do not have time to go to hell.
Goldy Moldavsky's writing is razor sharp. It is so on point, and captures the voice of the tumblr generation with precision. This will be the book that future authors will use as a reference to the voice of this particular time when it eventually becomes historical fiction. It's like an amped up time capsule in book form. The dark tone has been compared to Heathers, Jawbreaker, and Mean Girls and those are worthy comparisons to be had. This novel's greatest strength is it's voice, and the boldness in which is allowed to shine.
Not only offering a pitch perfect voice, this novel creates a delicious sense of tension. Things quickly spiral out of control after the girls kidnap their least favourite member of their favourite boy band. There is a sense of apprehension as you know that none of this can end well. That sense of foreboding only increases the dark tone of the novel. It's boundary pushing. It's bold. The writing, the characters, and plot all emphasis this.
People are quick to devalue or dismiss anything that is made popular by a female audience. Teen girls in particular are subjected to this. They are mocked, and the things marketed to them are deemed guilty pleasures that should be hidden in shame. Their power is all too often overlooked. However, this group has the money to spend purely on entertainment, and money talks. Comic Con had to move the Twilight movie panels to earlier in the day to accommodate the fact that their fans packed the venue. There is an awesome power there, people just tend to overlook it.
It is, also, often forgotten that these fandoms are behaving exactly as they should. There is a quote that resonated deeply with me as I was reading.
'Being interested in cute boys is what we're supposed to be doing at this age.'
This one line sums it up perfectly. This is exactly what they are supposed to be doing. This novel points out that the sheer power of their voice should be celebrated and encouraged because who knows where it could be focused as they grow older. This nugget is hidden within this novel's slick, black heart but it is there and it's a powerful message to take away. It also dances with how this power is sometimes viewed as scary or overwhelming and that is why there is this need to reduce or limit it.
The characters are an eclectic mix of girls that do not seem to have anything in common, nothing that would cement them as friends other than The Ruperts. This feels authentic to the fandom experience, particularly boy bands fans. Discovering that someone likes the same boy band as you will immediately result in a bond. This entire novel, while heightened and dramatized, does have some truth within it's pages about the frenzy that surrounds these boy bands, and their fans. It is easy to be pulled into the freedom of unabashedly professing your love of something and that is what fandoms are all about. I also delightfully appreciated that the crushing realization all fangirls have when faced with the fact that their idols are imperfect was included in this novel. These boy band members are human, and are flawed. Goldy makes sure that they fall from their pedestals just a little, and it's nostalgic for anyone who has gone through it.
A novel that celebrates the power of fangirls with a bitingly dark edge. This novel is a must read for those who want their stories laced with dark humour, and is a love letter to anyone who has ever been passionate about something, particularly young girls. Goldy Moldavasky is a bold, brightly vivid new voice the young adult genre and I await, with the fevered excitement of a group of fangirls, whatever she writes next.
