A really fun an entertainingly written story, but a bit too chill in the pace for me. I'm sure lots will love it though! My problem was comparing it to Daisy Jones & The Six...

It's not that this book isn't funny; it has its moments. It follows two bandmates as they try to make it in the world of rock and roll. They find themselves in humorous situations, lose the view of why they started the band in the first place, and then get back together again. So, yeah, the humor is there. But that isn't the only thing that makes a book a pleasant, interesting read. It didn't hold my attention for too long each time I picked it up. Nothing eventful really happens. A reviewer described it as a cozy mystery but for guys. I agree with their assessment mostly, except there was no mystery to solve.

DNF at 19%. Holy hell, Batman! This honestly felt like the book version of one of those bros who explains the entire backstory of a superhero to you in line for the latest Marvel or DC movie. When you describe your band's sound by using fifty different bands, with fifty different qualifiers, I'm honestly just going to fall asleep. So I DNF'd.

This is a great book, even if our hero is a bit of an idiot at times. The other characters could have been a bit more fleshed out, but the story was well written and appealing even to someone not that bothered by the music industry.

I wanted to love it but it didn’t do it for me sadly. I didn’t quite get the humour unfortunately and therefore didn’t enjoy it all that much

An engrossing and enjoyable story of a rock band that made me smile and kept me hooked till the end.
I liked the style of writing and appreciated the characters and the descriptions of the rock world.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Light-hearted insight into the life of an aspiring musician and his band. This is semi-autobiographical, and that shines through with every crazy chapter. There's a wonderful sense of connection with the author, and I'm wondering just how little he had to embellish things.
Really enjoyed the tour!

Mockstars is the fictionalised account of the origins of a real-life English Indy pop band called The Lightyears, written by the keyboard player. It was originally published in 2014 but is being rereleased this month. It wasn’t quite as funny as the blurb led me to expect but it was an easy feelgood read on a rainy day that had me wishing we could still go to concerts...

Set in the mid-2000s, this has nice middle-class Berkshire boys George, the guitarist, and Christoph the narrator, who’ve been in a band together since their early teens, beginning their music career playing dingy London clubs.
They manage to poach a talented drummer from a rival band, and talk George’s younger brother away from his university studies to play bass. Next thing they know they’re on a European tour - well, a series of pubs in a French ski resort, trying to live up to rock & roll cliches as well as pay the bills...

This was a light-hearted look at life in a band, and I’ve no doubt some of their escapades were real. I hadn’t heard of them, it’s not really my kind of music although after finishing it I looked them up online and (spoiler alert) it was nice to see they did make it. I’m not a fan of first person present narration but Chris has an engaging very self-deprecating style and there were plenty of amusing moments. 3.5 rounded up for not taking himself too seriously.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC which allowed me to give an honest review.

This story of a band's early days is not very rock and roll. It's a good story though. Nothing goes right for them but they bumble along.

This story has so much potential but I feel like the it's getting lost in itself. It's completely saturated in description, so much so, that I've lost the point more times than I can count. Long story short... is most certainly not how this Author tells a story, in fact trying to get a drink described is three paragraphs long. I think there's witty banter, but even that get's lost in the internal dialog. I was looking for a story that would entertain me with some shared experience (I'm just a singer in a rock n roll band myself) but this was not for me. I was exhausted by description and wish that I could have slogged through a bit more to get to the meat of this story, but I just don't feel like it's there. I do appreciate the opportunity to have read this story in advance and wish that it resonated with me more.

Entertaining book about naive lads from the home counties dreaming of becoming rock stars meet Spinal Tap. A coming of age book exploring relationships and reality and the tinsel world of rock and roll. Some gruesome characters emerge from this book, based on the diaries of a member of an existing band, it is quite difficult to differentiate between truth and fiction but as the well known phrase goes 'truth is stranger than fiction'. Well written and sometimes cringe worthy in the scrapes that this group of lads get into. Not for everyone with some down to earth crude moments, strong language and debauchery, but worth a read.