Oh my gosh this was absolutely brilliant. I read it in 2 days and honestly I would have read it in a few hours if I wasn't responsible for 2 children.

I LOVE books like this. A bird eye view on fame, on life and the journey it takes you on. I absolutely loved Amber. She can be annoying, a lot of the things she did frustrated me but I loved her regardless. I kind of imagine Britney Spears in that way, trying to shed a good girl image and grow up in the limelight!

The writing..... phenomenal.

Literally I screamed "Yes!!!!!" right at the end because I was desperate for something to happen and it did hehe!!!!!

While we were all dancing and loving life to a backing track of Britney, Cristina and Avril (among others), back in the late ’90’s and early ‘noughties, did we ever stop to think of what was going on in their lives … in the background … how they got to where they were … how they were propelled into the spotlight, into “overnight success”? Honey by Isabel Banta is a magnetic, absorbing look at teenage girls aiming to achieve superstardom at a time where the entire music industry was managed and manipulated by arrogant, misogynistic men. While this is a work of fiction, it reminded me a bit of I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, which was not.

In the late 1990’s when girl bands and boy bands were the thing, I don’t think many of us stopped to think about think about the actual lives of those people chasing fame and fortune who we kept hearing every time we switched on a radio, and whose faces we saw on just about every magazine cover. Did we believe everything we read? I’m not sure, but we went along with the hype anyway. And when the stars reached higher and higher, they were so far out of our reach that they became even more ‘imaginary’ to us … even more unlike real people. So we never even imagined what could be going on behind the scenes.

Honey gives us a no-holds-barred look at what was really going on, and while this is a work of fiction, one can’t help thinking that this has been written by someone who knows the inside story because it all rings so very scarily true all these years later when we’re (hopefully?) a lot more savvy about what goes on behind the scenes of super-stardom.

Amber Young has always dreamed of being a star and then her wish finally comes true. She’s propelled up the ranks and I started to murmer to myself (on repeat) “be careful what you wish for …” While she’s one of a group of young girls who are ‘chosen’, they’re not all given the same treatment and we see how ‘management’ of the big record companies that they’re all clamouring to be signed to, decides to mould their differing images in ways that they think will work in their favour. Whose favour? Well, not necessarily the girls themselves, that’s for sure! They’re basically the last ones to be considered.

Unfortunately for Amber, she’s the one who they seem to decide will be the scapegoat – and if she’s the record company management’s scapegoat, then you can be sure that anything and everything she does will be manipulated to seem negative in the eyes of the public! My heart ached for her, as she worked her butt off for recognition, only to be knocked back down every time she managed to scrape her way towards gaining some positivity in the competition to get to the top. But it wasn’t only the fame that she craved, she just wanted some love and attention – not even adoration; just some care. There were so many times that I wanted to reach out and give her a hug. She didn’t get enough of those during so many difficult years.

I think my favourite character though would have to be Sonny, Amber’s long-suffering personal manager, who supports her and tries to guide her through thick and thin. He’s her champion, her saviour, her rock. He also becomes her family, and while we’re on that point, let’s talk about my least favourite character, Amber’s Mom, who defines the words ‘absent parenting’. After schlepping her around the cattle call of auditions when she’s barely into her teens, as soon as it looks like Amber has her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder to success,she more or less walks away, dumping her in the lions’ den to be mauled by anyone who feels that they own the right to do so – and I don’t mean physically; I mean emotionally and professionally. Believe me, when you read what went on here, you’ll realize that’s a lot worse than any physical abuse!

This is an absorbing, magnetic, although often disturbing read. I found myself angered to realize that as much as these young girls were (and I’m sure still are) manipulated by a bunch of arrogant, controlling men, so were we, the public, who are fed lie after lie for the sake of their chosen narrative. I’d like to think that most of those young women who’ve reached SuperNova status today have achieved it by having a lot more say over how they got there!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

If you grew up in the late 90s, early 2000’s you’ll absolutely adore this debut.

It made me feel so nostalgic as I lived through this myself because I was born in 1988 so I was growing up when this book was set and that made it even more special and somewhat reflective.

It’s a harsh look at a coming of age story in the world of fame and all that that entrails in the 90s, 2000’s that I found to be a real eye opener.

I felt so sorry for Amber, what with her family life and how she doggedly pursued her dream, largely without any support.

This is a staggeringly good debut that so many will love.

I wanted to like this more.

Some times the pacing seemed off and although I normally like books that don't go into too much detail sometimes this wasn't enough detail.

I definitely recognised who some characters could be based on and so having that knowledge and picture in my mind made it more enjoyable.

Having been in my 20s during the late 90s and early 2000s I love reminiscing - and although pop wasn't my genre it was still very relatable. I really liked the style it was written in and the track listing and wiki pages.

Overall I enjoyed it but would love to have had it a bit more fleshed in places.

Honey is a coming of age story set in the late 90’s early 00’s and centres around the life of Amber Young - singer/songwriter at the peak of her fame.

I quite liked this book! I liked how it felt we were getting an inside look into the world of someone famous - the idea that we can only see what happens on the outside and not what is really going in these people’s lives!

I liked that this book was also set in the 90’s where I feel this type of pop star was always in the headlines. I liked that we also got to hear how she interacted with other famous people and how people can help each other. I also liked how it highlighted what fame can do to a family and their relationships.

I feel this book also tackled a couple of tough topics so I’d maybe check trigger warnings if you feel you might need to.

Overall, I liked this and found it an easy read - exactly what I was looking for!

Y2K nostalgia? Daisy Jones & The Six for the pop girlies? A feminist reckoning with the misogyny of the music industry? On paper, Honey is extremely up my street, but in reality I felt a bit go on girl, give us nothing.

Honey is the story of pop megastar Amber Young, her rise to stardom, and all that she went through to get there. It charts her childhood as a time marked by failed auditions, and a determination of succeed anyway. She joins a girl group, meets her best friend, and eventually goes stratospheric. Banta succeeds in re-creating the pop landscape of the latter 1990s with near flawless precision: the boybands, the competition between the female soloists, the intrusive journalists. It’s soaked in nostalgia for that time and, in this respect, the novel is transportive and fascinating.

Where Honey falls flat is, sadly, the characters. Amber is embroiled in plenty of drama throughout the novel – but what’s wild is that this drama ended up being quite dull to read. I struggled to care for Amber, her friendship with fellow starlet Gwen, or her love interest, Wes. The narrative voice – it’s a first-person novel, recounted by Amber – felt like it was 10 years older than it supposed to be. their self-reflection at the age of 19 rang false and the relationships didn't feel real. Amber goes through a lot of trauma in the book too, and almost none of it is properly explored. I rarely felt any connection with her throughout the novel, which made it much harder to enjoy.

Banta makes excellent use of multimedia in the novel – we see song lyrics, news articles, magazine quizzes and screenshots from websites. I am a sucker for a multimedia addition to a novel, and I loved this element of the book, though I wish they had been contemporary additions, rather than Genius annotations from the modern day. There’s also – and spoiler alert, I guess – a sickeningly lazy addition at the end of the novel, where the author uses a Wikipedia article to outline the rest of Young’s life. It’s meant to feel like a mic-drop – I think – but I hated it so much it brought Honey down from a 4-star to a 3-star for me.

Fun and fluffy, Honey has plenty to say but unfortunately missed the mark for me in how it said it. Worth a read (apparently the audiobook is fantastic) but ultimately a bit forgettable.

Honey is a rip roaring journey through the 90’s and 2000’s pop world. A place where how you look matters, a place of young female talent that is controlled by middle aged men, and of boy bands where even their love lives are controlled by management. Isabel Banta follows the story of three young pop stars, from auditions to world tours, and what there lives are like as part of the pop factory.

Isabel Banta not only focuses on the female characters of Amber and Gwen, but also how young men were treated by telling Wes’s story. I really liked this balance, it showed that men were exploited, but a lot less than women. As usual the PR machine likes to put people in boxes, Gwen the innocent young women, whilst Amber is sold as a sex kitten, more raunchy than Gwen that sees her get hammered in some press as being overtly sexual and flaunting her body. As expected this isn’t a decision made by Amber but by her team. It was annoying, but probably true even today, that she was seen not as a person but a commodity, and her case a pair of boobs that men speak to rather than face. Control is a central part to this book, the record companies control every part of these artist’s lives, even down to fake love lives that are used as a popularity tool.

Isabel Banta has created three wonderfully drawn characters that bounce off each other bringing their individual stories to this book. I would say Amber is the main character, she has lived and dreamed this since her teens. I felt she was the most exploited due mainly to her developped body, whilst she wanted to be more than her sexuality. Being on constant PR tours, playing concerts all over the country and on the world’s stage leaves her lonely and it is fascinatig that her best friend is her said rival, Gwen. I loved their relationship, no one could know they were friends, but they are in a rare situation of being pop stars so understand each other, and give each other support and confidence to go for change.

By introducing Wes, Isabel Banta shows the opposite of Amber and Gwen’s story. Being part of a boy band means that he has a group of friends to share his experience, he never feels the isolation of Amber and Gwen. However, I did feel that he was maybe alone in a different way. He can’t be with the perosn he loves, his PR team want him to fake a romance with Gwen as it is good for their careers.

When reading this it did make me think of Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, although this really isn’ their story. It was how the music industry pitted these women against each other, and how they developped from teenagers to young women wanting more control, but finding obstacles in their way.

Honey is a real escapist novel. I actually read it in one day and enjoyed immersing my self in the 90’s pop scene. There are obviously a lot of moral and controlling issues in relation to the characters, and post #MeToo we hope that things have changed and these young stars have more control over their lives. The writing captured the amosphere of this period and I loved the inclusion of some of the song lyrics, giving further insight into Amber’s life. This would make the perfect holiday read with its heady mix of sex, lust, power and rivalries. A sexy and sintillating read.

The synopsis sounded right up my street. But I was left so bored by the book.
The pacing was just soooo slow. It felt so ploddy.
Just felt like a series of lists and basic description... "I did this", "then I did that", "next this happened" - it was written so plainly, and just didn't go anywhere for the longest of times!!

Really really did not like this book!

If the central character of Daisy Jones and the Six was a 90s pop idol/Britney Spears type character! The ups and downs of the world of celebrity when a member of a hugely popular girl band goes solo.

Honey tells the story of Amber Young in the nineties and early 2000s. Singing is the only thing she is good at. She enters a show called Star Search when she is young but loses to a boy called Wes who can't believe his luck, as he thinks Amber is a fantastic singer.

At the age of seventeen, Amber is put into a girl group called Cloud9. There, she becomes good friends with bandmate Gwen, and the Cloud9 girls open for boyband ETA, Wes's band.

The novel follows Amber leaving the band and making it as a solo artist. The vibe feels nostalgic and it focuses on the industry, tabloids, the sexualisation of female artists. She is competing against other female solo singers (including her best friend Gwen), her relationships are highly publicised, people online say things about her.

There are some aspects of mixed media in there too and whilst I love that, I would have enjoyed an extra chapter on Amber now in her forties with her husband and child and how that came to be, rather than it being akin to a Wikipedia article.

I really enjoyed this book and it is a great, easy to read debut.

A debut novel set in the 1990’s-2000’s and largely in the USA music industry. In 1997 after dreaming of being a pop star Amber Young is chosen as a member of new girl group Cloud 9. After some success the band member start to leave to pursue solo careers, including Amber. I’m sure this is going to be repeated on a regular basis, but I couldn’t help myself thinking about Britney Spears virtually from the start of this book and I’m not really sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. The use of mixed media was an interesting addition - Sony lyrics, media stories and Wikipedia - although I wasn’t over enamoured with some of the song lyrics. I found this quite slow moving and not my normal read but I can see that for anyone growing up in this era it will be a fascinating book.

Briefly, another member of the band was Gwen Morris and although they didn’t meet regularly she and Amber became friends. Amber had met Wes Kingston at an audition as a child and she never forgot him. Their paths crossed again when he became a member of boy band ETA. However, although he started dating Gwen the attraction between Amber and Wes was simmering and when they were on tour together her passion got the better of her conscience.

The characters are so young when they start the path towards living their dreams of fame and fortune. But what they never realised was how the industry would exploit and mold them as they desired, in Amber’s case she was sexualised and labelled a ‘bad girl’. I get the feeling that this is probably quite true to the experiences of many hopefuls in the music industry. Amber’s is quite a sad story, a coming of age for a girl who just wants to be loved and I did enjoy her friendship with Gwen after her less than happy childhood. Entertaining.

3.5⭐️

Its 1997 - and Honey is the story of Amber Young, a girl who would do anything to be famous. She has a pretty tough upbringing, her father has left home and her mother turned to booze to see her through, but Amber keeps on going, sending tapes off to record labels, applying to talent shows and everything in-between. Each step gets her that bit closer to where she wants to be, bathed in adoration and adulation.

She gets to the live rounds of TV talent show, losing out to Wes (remember that name, he's going to be important!) but gets picked for girl group Cloud 9. The group has all the usual 90s stereotypes, the virginal one, the innocent one, and Amber who has been designated the sexy one. They are often paired up with boyband ETA which includes our boy Wes. Their tours start off small, playing to arcades and shopping malls across America but slowly growing in popularity and moving to arenas.

The book follows Amber's career including Cloud 9's trajectory and what happens when Amber and fellow Cloud9-er Gwen decide to go solo. Gwen and Wes become a media couple, with a host of articles dedicated to their romance. Amber too has her eye on Wes, sensing a connection between them, but doesn't want to hurt her friend's feelings. She has other relationships along the way, claiming the sexual identity that she's been given and owning it. This stands in sharp contrast to Gwen and fellow singer Savannah who have been lauded as innocent pure role models. The industry managers completely mould the girls into marketable commodities, with their outfits, their performances and their songs all playing to their allocated roles.

Through the story we see Amber's growth, both as a person and as an artist, dealing with the demands and restrictions made by the music industry and by the media. Its fascinating watching her discover who she really is and what she can achieve, and I had to keep reminding myself just how young she was when she was reaching such stardom. Her relationship with producer Axel is a pivotal one for her, as she can move into a more grown up sound and image with his backing.

I liked the mixed-media approach, the inclusion of song lyrics, media articles and interviews with Amber or about Amber really added to my understanding of her as a character.

I would recommend this to fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid and that vibe of book; it was a great read with lots to say about the pop industry.

This has been one of my anticipated reads this year, so I was excited to get stuck into this one.

I loved the nostalgia of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. The story is told from the POV of Amber Young who is discovered at a young age. She ends up in girl group, where she meets her best friend Gwen.

I liked Amber and she reminded of both Britney and Christina at times. For how the media criticized them for how they dressed and acted. I really liked the friendship between her and Gwen it seemed really genuine it was good that they had each other to turn to.

The mixed media was another thing I really enjoyed within the book, the magazine articles, song lyrics, emails and the Wikipedia page at the end was brilliant!

Thank you to Compulsive Readers for having me on the tour and to the publisher for the gifted copy of the book.

I was expecting a nostalgia tinged addictive read from Honey and, don’t get me wrong, it totally delivered on that. However, Honey was actually far more introspective and deep than I had anticipated and I’m so glad I had the chance to read it because I found it completely enthralling. Honey is about so many things, primarily the way women’s bodies and personalities are often treated as a commodity, especially in the entertainment industry, and the way society often vilifies young woman with any sense of agency over themselves in a way it has never done to young men. It is also about love and respect, for the people you care about but for oneself especially.

Amber is a deeply compelling character, and one who I found really easy to root for throughout. I desperately wanted her to understand her own worth and value in a world that often makes it hard. I also loved her friendship with Gwen and really appreciated the way Isabel Banta handled their relationship when she could easily have taken a more typical but less meaningful route with it. I really think Honey is the perfect read for summer. It will feel especially resonant for anyone who, like me, grew up in the late 90’s/early noughties but I genuinely think everyone will find something to enjoy in this fabulous read. Sensitive, incisive and beautifully observed – Honey is not to be missed.

As a debut, this is a well-structured read. Is there room for improvement? Yes, of course! Does some of it feel like it’s been done before? Yes, again! Did I enjoy it? Surprisingly, yes, I did, more than I thought I would.

Told through multiple media points, this tells the story of Amber, a girl with a natural talent for singing, who is selected to join the girl band Cloud 9. The concept may not be original, but I think Amber is a very complex yet entertaining protagonist — credit to the author for this creativity. There is much more to her than I initially anticipated, and readers, like myself, who can read between the lines will appreciate this. It’s not a case of what the author tells us; it is what she doesn’t that kept me engaged and addicted enough to finish within 24 hours.

If you're a fan of coming-of-age stories with a splash of romance, glitz, scandal, and a love for music-themed novels, this book will surely captivate you.

I eagerly anticipate more from this author in the future, as I believe they have the potential to create more engaging and thought-provoking stories.

Having seen this described as for lovers of Daisy Jones, I knew I had to pick it up, but unfortunately, this set it up to fall short for me.

I'm sure there will be people who absolutely lap this book up, but it was just missing a certain sparkle. I didn't feel like I connected with the characters & the relationships & any adversity they faced was very surface level or very quickly skimmed over. It did give me a little anxiety, but that was more to do with the late 90s/00s judgement on body image & celebrity.

I'd love to have seen Amber's friendship with Gwen further explored, the relationship breakdowns & certain aspects of the story, which were glossed over, could have been examined more thoroughly.

I buddy read this & know the others enjoyed it more than me, so I know my issues with the book were a me thing.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me this book for a fair and honest review.

Having this book described as similar to Daisy Jones and the Six made me request this, however, there was absolutely no comparison at all. This was just a way to sell the book I feel. It was not well written and the characters were not developed at all. Amber could have been described more to enable some like ability but she wasn’t. It was like a homage to Britney Spears with other not so successful individuals involved. This had potential but failed badly i am afraid.

🎧Audiobook Review🎧

#adprproduct

I want to thank NetGalley for approving me for an ARC of this book. Special shout out to the Tsundoku Squad, for the buddy read.

🎶Music
⭐Fame
👧🏻Coming of Age
💞Friendships

I found this book to be a quick listen. Amber's story and her friendship with Gwen, particularly intrigued me. It had the vibes of the 90's pop stars, over-sexualised young girls, captured by fame and fortune. If you're a fan of Daisy Jones or Songs In Ursa Major then you will enjoy this one.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

It’s the 90s and Amber is about to become a star. She had the voice, the body and the look, however it is the drama that really gets her recognised. The reality of being famous and the not so glamorous behind the scenes is the real focus of this book and the importance of real relationships.

I was really looking forward to this book as it’s my era and I love Daisy Jones & Britney Spears (the cover recommendation), and although at times it really sparkled it just didn’t hit the mark in the way I really expected. It definitely had however potential to be amazing though!

The premise seemed promising but sadly, Honey missed the mark for me. I really struggled to finish it. It started off reasonably well but then the storyline and the writing both went downhill. The book seemed heavily inspired by the likes of 90's pop icons such as Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera.

There was no depth to Amber's character at all. She came across as lacklustre. She was okay with everything that was happening with her and she didn't feel the need to stand up for herself. The whole Amber, Wes and Gwen thing was just odd.

The writing was all over the place and mediocre at best; rushed in some parts, but slow in other parts. It was like reading a really bad version of Daisy Jones and the Six. It may have been a coming of age story, but nothing really happened.