Kill the Boy Band

by Goldy Moldavsky

Fangirls get a bad rap all the time - people say we're weird, hysterical, obsessed, certifiable. But those people don't understand.

Just because we're fangirls, doesn't mean we're crazy.

It's important you know that up front. Because everything I'm about to tell you is going to seem . . . well, crazy.

From thrilling debut author Goldy Moldavsky comes Kill The Boy Band, a pitch-black, hilarious take on modern fandom and the badass girls who have the power to make - or break - the people we call 'celebrities'.

• ISBN10: 0545867479
• ISBN13: 9780545867474
• Publish Date: 23 February 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Point
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

The joy you find as a teen, however frivolous and dumb, is pure, and meaningful. It doesn’t matter that it might ferment and taste different when you’re older. That’s the whole point of being a teenager—not worrying about the future.

— A dark and hilarious book about fangirl culture: the good(?) and the crazy bad! What a fun, fun read!

[readingwithwrin]

"The joy you find as a teen, however frivolous and dumb, is pure, and meaningful. It doesn't matter that it might ferment and taste different when you're older. That's the whole point of being a teenager- not worrying about the future."

See Reviews First On My Blog


In this story we have the main protagonist and here three friends who all love the Ruperts. (They were put together on a British TV show and only three of the four can actually sing.)

We have Apple who loves Rupert P (the one who can’t sing and instead juggles) and whose parents are insanely rich.
Isabel who loves Rupert L and runs a site dedicated to gossip on the boys.
Erin who loves Rupert X and we find out later on has motive to dislike the boys.
Then we have the main protagonist, whose real name we never actually learn. But she loves Rupert K, and she turns out to be an unreliable source for information on what actually happened.

This story is hilarious at times, but it also is very serious at others. We have four teenagers who are a part of a fandom that can go a bit overboard at times. With three of them having taken things way to far at times.
"The fangirls of today are a way more sophisticated bunch. Loving someone so fiercely gave us permission to also be critical of them. You'll find the biggest Ruper critics in Strepurs. Sometimes we won't like a tattoo they'll get, or we'll think a haircut makes them look like a drug addict, or we'll make fun of the way they'll pose in photographs. Just because we teased did not mean we didn't also love. Fandom is a complicated culture."

But I will also admit that I related a little bit to this story as well. I’ve been a fangirl about things before as well, and still am about other things. Having said that though I do notice that some people in fandoms do take their love a little too far, especially when it starts causing harm to either them or others around them or the celebrity that they love so much. It’s an easy thing to have happen in the technology age we now live in. We have more access than ever before to famous people and because of that we tend to start thinking we actually know them, and have a say in what they say/do. But the truth is we don’t know what is really happening in their lives, because we only see a projected image, which is something that is addressed in this book.

Let’s get back to what actually happened in this book, and how the girls dealt with it.

So you know that they kidnapped one of the boys, and that they have no real idea what to do with him, now that they have him.. Well they get a bit creative, not only in the way they tie him up, but also in the way they deal with him once he wakes up. The girls eventually find out something they can use against him, and use it to get information needed, not only to see the other boys, but to make him do what they want.
But after a little while, the girls start having split opinions about what to do, and how they are going to get rid of him without getting into trouble. This becomes a big problem, one that causes far more group meetings/arguments between them then they had ever had before. We also see the girls interact with people around the boys.
We also learn how maybe they weren’t as good as friends as they had once thought with each of them keeping secrets from each other. Making each of them is a possible suspect.
I did like this story, and found it entertaining. I was not expecting that to be the person who had actually done it though, she did seem to have a reason to be upset with him.

[jeannamichel]

This book was crazy. In a good way.

Four super fans infiltrate the hotel their favorite boy band, The Ruperts, are staying at for their New York tour. After they, accidentally, kidnap one of the boys, they begin to realize how society pressures teens to love boy bands. Being a fan is not all that is cracked up to be.

First, I want to take a moment and breathe because you may not get a chance to when you plunge into the crazy that is Kill the Boy Band. Kill the Boy Band was the strangest debut I’ve ever read. It may have been the craziest. And it most definitely is the boldest piece of work that has graced my bookshelf in a long time.

It starts out innocent enough. These four girls are the ultimate fans of The Ruperts, a band of four boys named Rupert. Each fan all have their own way of loving the band. And then they don’t. After accidentally kidnapping one of The Ruperts, things start getting weird. Kill the Boy Band becomes a slow progression of true ridiculousness (and I never said it was funny). A lot of reviews have said how Goldy Moldavsky’s book is hilarious. I find the book filled with dark humor but nothing close to hilarity.

The narrative is told by a girl who never tells readers her name. At first, I thought not disclosing the protagonist’s name was meant to prolong the mystery, similar to why E.K. Johnston did it in A Thousand Nights. Yet, the true message behind the unnamed protagonist and the whole plot was not as literal as I first thought. Kill the Boy Band, underneath the ridiculousness of kidnapping a boy band member, is the true colors of the boy band dynamic in society and how it’s a false representation of society itself.

A documentary about boy bands and the fangirls that love them inspired Goldy Moldavsky to create Kill the Boy Band. The unnamed main character’s narration begins asking questions about fans and to what lengths they will go to in order to see the boys of their dreams. In turn, readers begin asking the same thing. Kill the Boy Band encompasses readers’ mind, and cleverly inspires readers to look between the lines beyond the strange plot. Kill the Boy Band may be the boldest debut which tells us a message about our own society. Now all I ask you: do you want to kill the boy band or let it continue on?