Honey,  by Isabel Banta, tells the story of Amber Young, an aspiring pop star in the late 1990s, and goes through her rise, her success, and her personal life.  This novel has a very 90s feel, with both the intense sexualization of young women and the faux-concern over young girls’ purity.  This was an amazing setting, it made me remember how awful radio DJs, talk show hosts and magazine interviewers could be to girl musicians in the 90s. So many very personal, very sexual questions on air and then the faux concern over skimpy clothes. I cringe at it now, but I really had no idea anything was weird at the time, teenage me read loads of magazine celeb features and didn’t think there was anything odd about how young women were often asked about their sexual status, partners, positions, etc., when that article was supposedly about a new album…

It also made me remember the excitement of buying or listening to a new CD and of discovering a new pop group at that time when music is really intense.

While the setting in Honey was vivid and compelling, I wasn’t really drawn in by the characters or main storyline. It’s a novel about Amber’s rise to fame, but there was an odd lack of tension in the book because I never wondered if she would succeed. Some of it is the flash-forwards, and some of it is just that there was nothing else in the book, so there was no feeling that Amber could find a different career or fail. This made the scenes of her career “struggles” less impactful. 

For example, teenage Amber loses on Star Search, but I didn’t feel like it was a real setback, and then Amber is recruited for the girl group Cloud9, but she decides to strike out on her own — I didn’t feel like it was a real risk.  It was clear that attempting a solo career was going to lead to the rest of the book.

Somehow, Amber’s character felt slightly static despite all the exciting events of the novel. The supporting characters, especially the other girl pop stars, were fun but slightly flat. Amber is marketed as the bad girl pop star, a contrast to the sweetly virginal Savannah and everyone’s-beloved-girlfriend Gwen, since as we all know there are only a few archetypes for pretty girl stars. Unfortunately, I found the creative collab section dull, too. I didn’t really buy that making music was essential to Amber, mostly because we never really saw her writing songs and feeling good until that point.

Still, these slightly flat characters worked well as methods to examine and discuss 90s pop culture. This made for a fun read, there’s a compelling mix of the critical and nostalgic takes. I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes of musician life and pop culture, perhaps from reading all those magazine features in the 90s.