Review: A Fun, Light, Enjoyable Read
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 13, 2013
I must start off by saying I'm pleasantly surprised with this book. I skimmed the first few pages of the preview offered by Amazon and thought the writing style might not be what I like, but the premise sounded interesting and unique and I decided to try it anyway, especially since it had great reviews.  As it turned out, the writing was a lot better than my glimpse lead me to believe.  It was engaging and entertaining.  The characters each had their own personality and interacted well with one another.  The sexual tension between Danny and Elliot was to die for and I loved reading about their blossoming relationship and comfortable flirting.  I loved how the author presented the story.  We see the boys auditioning, meeting one another, becoming a band and getting their name out there, what happens once they've hit it big, and a whisper of what's to come in the future.  At over 300 pages, I was already happy with the length of the story, but going through all of these stages made it seem much longer without weighing me down. I felt like I was reading a saga of the rise of this band and I felt really satisfied at the end.  The author writes in clips from the local teen magazine and various twitter updates which worked really well and gave the book more dimension.  The tweets were especially amusing because they felt real and looked like comments I've seen on Youtube and other websites.  Also, the chapters are the titles of various songs and not only did that go well with the musical motif but it gave an accurate summary of what would happen within that section.Now, it's been mentioned in other reviews that the author was borrowing from the "Larry Stylinson" relationship present in One Direction.  I don't listen to them and don't know much about them or their couplings, but my sister does.  As I was going over the book and the characters with her, she confirmed that the similarities were too much to be coincidental, from the character who eats all the time to the indie rocker who befriends the band.  I don't really mind this, although some times I did feel as though I were reading slash fiction, but I'm just putting it out there in case it will affect your decision to read this book, which it definitely should not if you're thinking about passing this one up.  There were, however, things that got under my skin.  In a few parts later in the book there were some grammatical errors (saying something like "They want Danny and I for the concert" when it should say "They want Danny and me for the concert") which probably won't bother most people but for someone like me it was a little stab in the gut every time I read it.  Also, I got tired of the back-and-forth with several situations in the book.  Danny and Elliot were constantly brooding over things like does he or does he not like me, I have to hide this but I can't, I'm being careful but how can the world not know, etc.  It wasn't too overbearing but it was annoying.  I also didn't like when the band members called their fans sweetie, honey, babe, and the like.  It just sounded artificial to me and too personal and I rolled my eyes whenever that happened.  Finally, there was one little melodramatic scene that, while I see and agree with how it fits in the story, I couldn't take too seriously because of the way it was written and handled.With all the positives and the few negatives, I give this book 4.5 stars.  It was definitely a good purchase and one I recommend, especially if you're looking for something different than the average m/m romance out there.  There were a few sex scenes, not too explicit but not faded into shadow either, and they were written well.  The characters were engaging and it was fun to see what happened to them over the course of this novel.  Larry Stylinson aside, it was a great read so don't hesitate to purchase this.