Title: Honey
Author: Isabel Banta
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Zaffre
Publication Date: 25th June 2024
Rating: 4.5/5
Cover:
Book Summary:
It is 1997, and Amber Young has received a life-changing call. It’s a chance thousands of girls would die for: the opportunity to join girl group Cloud9 in Los Angeles and escape her small town. She quickly finds herself in the orbits of fellow rising stars Gwen Morris, a driven singer-dancer, and Wes Kingston, a member of the biggest boy band in the world, ETA.
As Amber embarks on her solo career and her fame intensifies, she increasingly finds herself reduced to a body, a voice, an object. Surrounded by the wrong kind of people and driven by a desire for recognition and success, for love and sex, for agency and connection, Amber comes of age at a time when the kaleidoscope of public opinion can distort everything, and one mistake can shatter a career.
Inspired by the starlets of the 90s and noughties who became as infamous for their personal lives as their hypersexualised music videos and lyrics, Honey is a novel about the journey from girlhood to womanhood and how far we are willing to go in the pursuit of love . . .
Review:
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.
★★★★.5
Huge thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for my place on this tour and for the copy of the book. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.
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