Book Review: Rockoholic by C. J. Skuse
A surprising and well-written YA about extreme fangirling and how celebrities are seen as public property.
Rockoholic by C.J. Skuse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of the things I really liked about this book was how it surprised me. I expected it to be a kind of YA chick lit, but it turned out to be more intense than I initially gave it credit for.
Basically, this story is about Jody, who’s in love with Jackson Gatlin, the frontman of The Regulators. Due to some mishap, she accidentally-on-purpose kidnaps Jackson, and when he decides he didn’t want to leave, she ends up hiding him in her garage for a while.
This is an intriguing premise, and of course, I wanted to know what happens next! It ended up surprising me because of how honest and thoughtful it was.
I didn’t really like Jody in the beginning, because of how naive and foolish she was about both Jackson and her best friend Mac. She didn’t seem to know how to behave appropriately, she made a lot of foolish decisions, and she didn’t appreciate Mac very much. She grew some by the end of the book though, so that was nice to see.
I did really like Mac, and little Cree was adorable! Jackson was a little bit of diva, but he was also going through drug withdrawal. He was hard to like at first, but we understand why he is the way he is when we learn more about his story.
It was a really interesting look at how celebrities can be so completely misrepresented by the media, and how some fans can be so blindly and deeply infatuated by their idols.
I’ve never been the kind of fan that goes crazy over an artist. Granted, I never really had a chance to get anywhere near an artist I liked, but I have never queued for hours waiting to buy a new CD/tickets to a concert/an opportunity to meet the artists (I’m thinking that this will change when I finally get to a BEA convention one day!).
The book was just so good at showing this side of fan-girling to me; how the hardcore fans went early to sleep outside the venue the day before the concert, how some of them wait the whole day just to get to see the concert later that night, how crazy some of the fans get that they have to have an emergency room for overexcited fans that get hurt…
It was really eye-opening to me!
