bumblingbookworm's Review of Fireworks

by Katie Cotugno

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.

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.

Fireworks

by Katie Cotugno

Reviewed by bumblingbookworm on Aug 25, 2016

Reading updates