Keeping the Beat

February 13, 2017
Lucy Gosling and Harper McKenzie, both 17, were once best friends, but Harper has a wild streak that Lucy’s protective parents fear. Even though Lucy’s parents want her to focus on her schooling, Lucy and Harper wind up entering a reality TV band competition, Project Next. Their band, Crush, includes three other school friends, and things heat up after the group wins the British competition and heads to Los Angeles to prepare for the final competition. Unsupervised, the girls deal with a series of soap operatic issues including addiction, eating disorders, sexual assault, a hit-and-run, and Harper’s murder, which is revealed in the opening pages. Debut novelist Powell (a pseudonym) and Norton (the MetaWars series) have created a page-turning thriller, originally published in the U.K. as Drummer Girl, that doesn’t skimp on the drama. Rotating among the perspectives of a handful of characters, the authors keep up a swift narrative pace, though they don’t delve too deeply into character development. Readers learn just enough to stay curious about what will happen next to Lucy and her bandmates. Ages 13–up.

February 1, 2017
Five London girls form a band and enter a trans-Atlantic reality show in an attempt to become rock stars.The book opens with a murder, then chronicles the time leading up to that event. Lucy's parents have forbidden her to see her best friend, Harper, but now Harper needs Lucy's drumming talents for her new rock group, Crush. Harper assures Lucy, Robyn, Toni, and Iza that Crush will win. However, Harper has an ulterior motive: she wants to hook up with her old boyfriend, ne'er-do-well Rafe, son of an entertainment icon. They win one of the four top spots in the show and travel to live in LA, over the objections of Lucy's parents, where each girl falls into her own difficulty. Harper tries to outmaneuver her rival for Rafe, Skye, who's really in love with her family gardener. Robyn's use of diet drugs leads to a serious addiction. Toni gets into a relationship with the group's married manager, threatening the entire enterprise. Iza falls in love with a boy perfect for her but is too shy to manage the romance well. Meanwhile, Lucy impresses the group's producer with her drumming skills but realizes that it's really up to her to hold the group together. The authors juggle the romances and their mostly white cast against a glamorous Hollywood backdrop, switching the third-person narration through the perspectives of the girls. As they move into the more serious murder mystery, the story begins to deepen somewhat--but never more than somewhat. For fans of slow, soapy thrillers. (Thriller. 12-18)

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March 1, 2017

Gr 10 Up-Lucy is a drummer, and she loves what she can do and learn. Her friend Harper decides that they should form a band and audition for a reality show. Lucy loves this idea, but there is a small problem: she is forbidden to see Harper, because of a drunken car ride (Harper) and a broken leg (Lucy). The teen decides that the risk is worth the reward, and the two set out to fill in the rest of the members of their girl band Crush. The five girls must navigate a world of parents, past loves, new loves, drugs, clubs, stylists, publicists, mentors, and enemies on their quest to win the reality show and subsequently obtain a record deal. But in spite of the success they enjoy, disaster strikes. While the premise is interesting, this work suffers from many contrived coincidences and a lack of focus. The reality show context feels tacked on. The narration shifts constantly from character to character with little warning, cycling through more than 10 perspectives without a discernible pattern. Each girl giggles, drinks, and meets a boy to have a crush on within a few days of getting to Los Angeles. The myriad issues-drug use, alcoholism, sexual assault, peer pressure, body image, overbearing parents, negligent parents-bog down the narrative. None of these relevant topics get the attention they deserve, and the contrived conclusion has an all-too-neat feel. VERDICT A strictly additional purchase.-Melyssa Kenney, Parkville High School, MD

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2017
Grades 9-12 Lucy is shocked when her former BFF Harper recruits her and three other girls to form a rock band, Crush, in an attempt to win Project Next, the latest reality TV sensation. But tragedy strikes when Harper ends up dead. How could everything go so horribly wrong? This is the question the plot answers as it loops back to the beginning to demonstrate the consequences of the decisions and actions of each character. At first, Powell and Norton's novel sounds like a murder mystery, when, in fact, it is more of an investigation into the lives of five very different girls, each with her own story. Lucy is by far the most compelling character as she struggles with being estranged from her close-knit family, who does not approve of her involvement with Harper or the band. Readers will also sympathize with bad-girl Harper, who has good intentions but always makes the wrong decisions. While the plot itself seems a bit overly long, readers who seek out realistic fiction about complex friendships will enjoy this novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2017
As finalists on a musical reality show competition, Lucy and her bandmates spend a summer in L.A. preparing for the show's finale. The girls become celebrities, perfect their album, and find romance, but they also uncover the dark side of fame. The jarring murder of one of the girls seems incompatible with the rest of the rock-and-roll wish-fulfillment story.

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)