Miel Moreland

This is an endearing, heartfelt story about four queer teens who were once part of a famous band that had broken up, with two of the members also going through a personal breakup. When a storm ravages their hometown, they come back together for a reunion benefit concert and must navigate old hurts, new loyalties, and the messiness of repairing and weaving new relationships. The story is a love letter to pop music, fandoms, and queer friendships and relationships.

This was cute. I was more invested in the band getting back together than the second chance at love romance. The four MCs read as older than their actual ages, but maybe young adults of 20 and 21 are more mature than I was back in prehistoric times (the 1980s).

*3.75

I have a love for books about music, and books about positive LGBT+ characters. When I heard about this book on YouTube, it sounded like everything I could have wanted. Sadly, it didn't pan out that way. I still enjoyed the story, but something didn't click with me and I'm not sure what.

I will be picking up more from Miel Moreland however

There were quite a few things that just didn't work for me in this book.

I would have preferred it if the protagonists had all been a little bit older. Sure the fallout after basically being child stars makes sense, especially in the way that it happened, but with how little time passes between the seperation and the "reunion" they were very much still teenagers and it kinda felt hard to believe what they'd all achieved and that they'd all just regretted leaving this quickly? And Eva and show more Celeste having first been together at 16 and then basically not moving forward from those emotions or giving me any reason to like their relationship at the moment (not the flashbacks) kind of made it hard to see why they would get back together this easily just based on the feelings of 16 year olds.

I was also very much over the self sacrificial tendencies of Steph. There's trying to be there for other people when they need you and there's hovering over people who are now the same age you were when you had already left home for quite some time. Honestly if I'd be their mum i'd be incredibly insulted over how incompetent Steph evidently thinks the mum is at being a mum even though Steph seems to love their mum and all she's done?

I also wasn't too big on the inclusion of tumblr in this. My experiences with Tumblr have been very different and if a "random" fan made a public post about leaving the fandom, no matter how popular they were in the fandom, everyone would just be confused because people on Tumblr change active fandoms all the time. With zero warnings. And no blog deletions. So if anything this post alone is incredibly suspicious if Eva doesn't want to be found out. show less