Confessions Of A Karaoke Queen

by Ella Kingsley

Maddie Mulhern is suddenly in charge. Her parents - former 80s pop duo Pineapple Mist - have left for the summer on a nostalgia tour, entrusting her to manage their struggling karaoke bar, Sing It Back. Panicking over the dodgy finances, Maddie takes a gamble: she signs up for a fly-on-the-wall reality TV series. With her faithful staff (divalicious drag queen Ruby, shy barman Simon and wannabe actress Jasmine) she'll transform the bar into a huge success. Simple. Right?

Executive Producer Evan Bergman knows that scandal sells. It's no coincidence that he hires cool, attractive Nick Craven as director. Evan wants drama on screen - and he'll do anything to get it.

As the series builds to a live finale, will Maddie see the truth in a Careless Whisper? Will Nick be able to keep his Poker Face? One thing's for sure: we all do things at karaoke that we regret . . .

• ISBN10: 0748125469
• ISBN13: 9780748125463
• Publish Date: 8 December 2011
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
• Imprint: Virago Press Ltd
• Edition: Digital original
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

As soon as I saw Confessions of a Karaoke Queen I wanted to read it. The dazzling pink cover was eye-catching and promised Chick Lit goodness. (My favourite kind.) I was also intrigued by the fact Ella Kingsley is the pseudonym for a well-known Chick Lit author (oh yes, people, pseudonyms are still alive and well in 2011). I’ve had a nosy about, wondering how many twenty-something ex-editors there are living in London and, well, I have some ideas of who Ella is although I’m probably wrong so I won’t bore you with the details. Some lucky people managed to get early copies of the novel – those who pre-ordered it from Amazon! – and one lovely person sent her copy to me after she’d read it and I dived in eagerly.

Confessions of a Karaoke Queen is a fun enough novel, but it wasn’t one I loved. I think that at this moment in time (8th July 2011) I’ve hit a Chick Lit wall and nothing is amazing me. I’ve been on a run of novels that have been three/three point five star reads, and I keep waiting for a novel to come along and shock me out of that. I wanted Confessions of a Karaoke Queen to do that, I desperately did. And it did. For a while. I absolutely swallowed up the first 100 pages or so but then it started to veer towards predictable and there’s only so many times you can read about a TV producer who turns out to be evil and an ex-boyfriend who suddenly comes crawling back apologising. It’s not Ella Kingsley’s fault, or the books fault, but if it’s something you’ve already read a million times before… Well, it gets boring and it makes me roll my eyes.

The premise of the novel is brilliant. There aren’t that many Chick Lit novels that I’ve read that are set around karaoke or reality TV shows (I could perhaps could them on one hand) and I loved the unique aspect there. I liked how Maddie wasn’t a singer herself, how it was left to her parents, the 80s duo Pineapple Mist (BTW, that’s the most awesome band name ever, I loved it). I liked how the reality TV show aspect came into it, too. I love reading about reality TV shows and how, most of the time, they’re never actually that ‘real’. It worked well and I definitely enjoyed that aspect of the novel, although I do question Maddie’s inability to realise just how evil Evan was. I knew it from the off, even more so when Alex came into the novel and the naivete shown by Maddie was quite something!

I found the characters fascinating. Maddie carried the book well enough, but for me it was those around her who made the novel. Maddie was just a bit too wishy-washy and passive-aggressive. For once I’d love to see a female character take people to task. I’d love to have seen Maddie take Evan to task and then take Nick to task, too, but instead she sort of flakes out and it disappointed me. She did want to take Evan to task, but once it came down to it, her bravado failed and it made me cringe, because there’s nothing wrong with a heroine who’s a bit more feisty. I liked the characters (and I use that term in its most proper form, because the bar folk at Sing It Back were indeed characters) Maddie had around her. Her best friend Lou, the bar staff: Simon, Ruby/Rob, Jaz, Archie. I loved Jaz best, with her pet guinea pig. I was also sad we didn’t get to see more of Maddie’s parents, they seemed to be so fun.

For the most part I enjoyed Confessions of a Karaoke Queen. It was a fun and quick read, but like most books I’ve been reading recently it just didn’t blow me away like I expected it to. I don’t know why, but the predictability of the novel didn’t work for me probably because of the fact I’ve seen it so many times that for once I’d like a character to be a bit more up on the game, a bit more feisty, with a bit more oomph. My hope goes on. There was nothing tragically wrong with the book and people will undoubtedly lap it up. I liked the premise, thought it was executed well enough, but I personally felt there was a lot of potential left out. I’d have also liked for Maddie and Nick’s relationship to have been shown to us more. Sure, I liked hearing how hot/gorgeous/fit he was but as for any actual romance, it was rather slim on the ground. I would recommend the book, Chick Lit fans will love it, no doubt, and I do look forward to seeing what the mysterious Ella Kingsley brings us next, but as is the way at the moment, it didn’t made me want to hit the karaoke stage. (That was an awful pun, wasn’t it?)