Fireworks

by Katie Cotugno

Erin Spencer (Narrator)

It was always meant to be Olivia. She was the talented one, the one who had been training to be a star her whole life. Her best friend, Dana, was the level-headed one, always on the sidelines, cheering her best friend along.But everything changes when Dana tags along with Olivia to Orlando for the weekend, where superproducer Guy Monroe is holding auditions for a new singing group, and Dana is discovered too. Dana, who's never sung more than Olivia's backup. Dana, who wasn't even looking for fame. Next thing she knows, she and Olivia are training to be pop stars, and Dana is falling for Alex, the earnest, endlessly talented boy who's destined to be the next big thing. It should be a dream come true, but as the days of grueling practice and constant competition take their toll, things between Olivia and Dana start to shift . . . and there's only room at the top for one girl. For Olivia, it's her chance at her dream. For Dana, it's a chance to escape a future that seems to be closing in on her. And for these lifelong best friends, it's the adventure of a lifetime--if they can make it through. Set in evocative 1990s Orlando, New York Times bestselling author Katie Cotugno's Fireworks brings to life the complexity of friendship, the excitement of first love, and the feeling of being on the verge of greatness.

• ISBN10: 0062661825
• ISBN13: 9780062661821
• Publish Date: 11 April 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: Balzer and Bray
• Edition: Unabridged edition
• Format: Audiobook (MP3)
• Duration: 8 hours
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

3.5 stars

Dana had just graduated from high school, and resigned herself to the fact, that she would waste the rest of her life away in Jessel, Georgia. After joining her best friend, Olivia, at an audition, she is offered a spot in the band. This is an opportunity to get out of Jessel for good, an opportunity for a future, but will she be able to choose that future over her best friend?

Front and center in this book, is the friendship between Dana and Olivia. These two life long friends are described as being attached at the hip. Olivia has always wanted to be a star, and Dana was always there to support her. The friendship hits quite a few bumps during this story, as Olivia struggles with sharing the spotlight with Dana. For all these years, the roles have been clearly defined, and now, Dana is attempting to step outside of that box. There were so many times I wanted to smack Olivia in the face. I was just so disappointed with her, but then, she would do something to redeem herself. This back and forth went on a bunch, and I was pretty over wanting to salvage this friendship. That is probably what kept me from rating the book slightly higher. I also felt it was somewhat one sided. Dana was always expected to give and give and give. She was always supposed to put Olivia's needs above her own, and that is just not how healthy relationships work.

That brings me to a part I really liked: the coming of age story. The three months in Orlando was quite a journey for Dana. She learned so much about herself, and exceeded her own expectations. She learned some hard lessons too, but I am happy to say, she was a better person at in the end. Her choices were not always the best, and they did not always yield favorable results, but she embraced the lessons learned, and those lessons helped shape her later choices.

Now, for my favorite part - the romance! I really loved Alex and Dana together. I shipped them so hard, and it's because their relationship was everything that Dana and Olivia's was not. Alex brought out he best in Dana. He encouraged her, supported her, and believed in her. He forgave her when necessary, and was honest with her. He knew when to advance and when to retreat, but he would not allow Dana to weasel her way out of things just because they were difficult. He was the perfect first love for her, and I could not have asked for anything better for Dana.

One thing that I thought was executed so well in this book, was that feeling of desperation and being trapped. Dana felt trapped in her small town. She felt imprisoned by her circumstances. She was poor and jobless with a mother who was a drunk. There was no college in her future. She did not have many opportunities presenting themselves. This is why the Orlando gig was so important. Why couldn't her "best" friend see that?

Yes, this idea of feeling trapped with no future in sight is sort of heavy, but I thought the tone of the book was fairly ideal. When I looked at that cover, I expected something sort of fun, and Cotugno definitely delivered on that. The issues presented, were handled in such a way, that they did not weigh the story down. It was a great balance of heft and fluff.


Overall: A fun and entertaining coming-of-age/romance with some great takeaways.

**I would like to thank Edelweiss and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book

Read this review and others at We Live and Breathe Books

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[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

This one gave me a pretty serious case of the sads. I really liked the author's last book, 99 Days, and was therefore super eager to get my hands on this one. Plus, as a child of the 90s, I was psyched! The characters in this book were a bit older than I was then (yes, yes, someone somewhere is older than me) so I expected lots of 90s shenanigans. I got... not much. There were a few references, mostly musically related, but for the most part, it felt like a contemporary novel set today, just with fewer iPhones.

But beyond that, let's talk about the story itself. So, as we know from reading the blurb (and since I trust your reading skills, I won't rehash too much), Dana has been chosen alongside her bestie Olivia to try out for a girl band (think: Spice Girls). Now this to me was a little hard to swallow because out of all the young females the country/world, four are chosen and these two best friends happen to be half of them? Okay then.

Of course, there is a boy band that is already somewhat established (think: NSYNC) who is staying at the same hotel complex. And this dude named Alex is hitting on Dana, but ::gasp:: Olivia had the hots for him once in eighth grade (that is paraphrasing, I don't remember when it was). So Dana tries to be all "Girl Power!" and you know, leave him alone because her best friend saw him first. But alas....

So she goes and sees him in random shady places, as you do. And things are... tense with the girls. I could look up the other two girls' names but it's unimportant. One of them is a typical "mean girl" and the other is just... there. But they aren't meshing well, they either fight or don't speak, and so Dana starts pulling away because she is shadily seeing Justin Timberlake Alex. And he doesn't want to play games.

So this is kind of how the story goes: Dana trying to decide if she really wants to be a singer/performer, Dana fighting with the other girls, Dana wondering if she's "good enough", and then Dana and Alex's relationship situation. I just didn't feel it, to be perfectly honest. Also I have no idea what was so special about her that she was picked to begin with, so that led to a certain level of disbelief. Plus, I didn't like how Dana didn't seem to care about the career half the time, and then wondered why everyone was pissed at her.

I liked Alex as a character, but the others? I could have lived without all of them. The adults were all irresponsible and really didn't care about the girls' welfare, which I am sure is accurate to a degree, but you'd think their families would have intervened a bit. Not Dana's, because her mom was the worst (again, this seemed quite trope-y, add an absent mom into the mix of unbelievably), but surely Olivia's?

Dana did grow a bit throughout the course of the book, which was a plus. She ended up starting to realize what it was she wanted, and applied herself to her goal, which was admirable. Until some stuff happened at the end that left me like "wait- what now?" Spoiler is coming so do not read if you haven't read the book.

I always tell you, you never listen. Hrmph. When Dana is given a choice to become a solo act, she turns it down because she and Olivia had made a pact not to abandon the other. Even though this would secure Dana's future, and make her new dream come true. And Olivia has been basically awful to her. Dana is still true to her word. Olivia, of course, is not, and takes the deal, leaving Dana alone, broke, and betrayed. It doesn't END there, but yeah.

Honestly, I just didn't feel that invested in any of the characters, which made me kind of apathetic. Dana and I just didn't click, and I was mad at most of the characters for most of the book.  I definitely wanted a more 90s vibe, too. I did enjoy some of the aspects of the romance, and that Dana did have some growth. But I think a lot of people seemed to enjoy this, so I may be the black sheep here!

[bumblingbookworm]

This review was originally posted on The Bumbling Bookworm

This was the last of the Katie Cotugno books sitting unread on my shelves, and I decided to read this on a whim one night.  It was a quick read which I sped through in about 90 minutes.  This book did a great job of evoking that 90s nostalgia I have for the boy band/girl band craze - I'm a child of the 90s and this just took me back!  I also enjoyed the romance between Dana and Alex, and how that played out until the last couple of chapters of the book - that's where it lost me unfortunately.  

I enjoyed the idea of the premise of this book but fairly or unfairly I kept comparing it to Emery Lord's Open Road Summer, which I think tackled the topic of teen stardom much better.  I didn't like the friendships in this book and had difficulty suspending my disbelief when it came to how the competition operated. Like sure, you're just going to get plucked out of nowhere and make it all the way through, beating trained singers and dancers, to be offered your chance at superstardom all based on your vibe, which you then turn down because you promised your friend who then stabs you in the back and takes it all... Yeah, no thanks.  It wasn't in any way believable for me, and I'm finding that I need that believability in my contemporaries.  So while this was a light, fun read, it had some things that irritated me and I just couldn't relate to it or find it believable.