The Brightsiders has the worst opening lines to a book that I’ve ever read — so much so that I closed my kindle book. I was prepared for it to be YA, but wow. I picked this up again because I noticed it was included in my Audible membership, so I thought I’d see if I could get through it this way and I did.
The book follows bisexual rock star drummer Emmy King as she navigates her relationships around fame and being the latest tabloid train wreck. The book is certainly not as exciting as we’re led to believe, but overall it was an easy and light listen and it kept me entertained enough. I did spend a lot of time going ??? though.
The number one praise this book gets is regarding diversity. While there were a lot of diverse characters in this book, it was inundated with them in a way that felt like the author was trying to tick every checkbox. It felt like this was prioritised over story, because it had such an underdeveloped plot. The diversity inclusions were also over-explained in a way that felt unnatural.
Emmy could’ve been a great character but she doesn’t experience much growth — her character development is very tell, not show. She has a problem with alcohol and partying, and after an incident caught by the paparazzi, she decides to stop drinking. The problem is that this is built up as this big problem, but then it seems easy for her — she hardly thinks about drinking after this. The other Brightsiders band members are Alfie and Ryan. Alfie is a genderqueer pansexual with anxiety who was probably the best character. Ry was barely a character at all — he wasn’t fleshed out and his main purpose seemed to be driving petty drama that barely meant anything. He felt like an afterthought.
The plot moves forward slightly with minor petty character drama. Anything with substance didn’t get explored with much depth. The band’s lyrics also don’t seem very rock/punk, despite how their sound and dress style is described. Here are some terrible lyrics: “we’re here and we’re queer and we won’t slow down, we’re here and we’re queer, we’re black, white and brown.” As I already mentioned, the target audience is teenagers, but this is too cringe even for them.
You’ll probably like this if you’re a teen or young adult who cares aggressively and passionately about diversity. I don’t particularly care for labels the way the current generation do — so characters being introduced with their labels and, in some cases, not much else, didn’t appeal to me.
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