Page Count: 368
Published by: KCP Loft
Published on: April 4, 2017
Genres: Realistic Fiction, Romance, YA, Contemporary,
Source: Paperback ARC– provided by publisher
Rating: 3.5 stars
Goodreads synopsis:
It was supposed to be the best summer of her life. Instead, seventeen-year-old Lucy finds her best friend, Harper, shot dead in an LA swimming pool. How did things ever go so wrong? The story circles back to trace the steps that led to this disaster.
Only Harper McKenzie could have taken five girls from their school and reinvented them as Crush, the top prospect to win the international talent contest Project Next. As soon as the band finds its footing, it scores a huge win in the UK semifinal. Next stop, LA!
The girls will spend a luxurious summer in Hollywood, living as reality TV stars while they prepare for their performance in the Project Next final. With a mansion to themselves, they’re the toast of the town … living every girl’s dream come true.
Only Harper McKenzie could have taken five girls from their school and reinvented them as Crush, the top prospect to win the international talent contest Project Next. As soon as the band finds its footing, it scores a huge win in the UK semifinal. Next stop, LA!
The girls will spend a luxurious summer in Hollywood, living as reality TV stars while they prepare for their performance in the Project Next final. With a mansion to themselves, they’re the toast of the town … living every girl’s dream come true.
~~~
Hey, guys!
The newly formed publishing company, KCP Loft, contacted me for an honest review. They sent me a large package with their four spring releases and I started Keeping the Beat right after I moved into my new house. We don’t have Wi-Fi, and I managed to bring most of my review books that I needed to read, and Keeping the Beat was the first of the KCP Loft books that I dove into.
Keeping the Beat follows five young girls from England as they begin their rise to fame as a girl band. As these young girls begin their journey to stardom, each character is fleshed out and their point-of-view is given as the story progresses. Each character has their own story and their own struggles throughout this book and each character added a unique perspective to the overall story. The writing style of this novel was very compelling and made it very fast paced. I managed to read this book in a day.
While the characters had very compelling, but they were very annoying too. Each character has such major issues with their new lives, but they don't handle them at all. They don't see reason when their mentors give them advice, and their personalities got kind of warped from their fame and they got even more annoying. I originally enjoyed most of the characters, but towards the end, I only enjoyed Lucy's attitude. I didn’t like Harper’s character from the beginning, and her actions throughout the book were just shade-y. I didn’t her as a person at all. Iza was super cute, but she would just act so stupid and out of character. The girls are between the ages 16 and 17 and they would always be drinking. As a 19-year-old, I just found it insanely stupid to allow such young girls to be drinking so excessively. I know that society has kind of okayed underage drinking, but I think it’s just dumb. I totally understand the changes to their characters, but it was just kind of annoying. It’s just very hard for me to understand why young girls would be totally fine and willing to blatantly act like imbeciles. Overall, I understand the changes to their characters because it’s a pretty realistic representation of how fame changes young people, but the characters just weren’t my cup of tea for most of the book. I really did enjoy their changes towards the end of the book, but I guess I’m just an old-fashioned person?
I really liked the relationship between the band members for most of this book for the most part. They drifted apart very naturally for a section of the book, and I really enjoyed how their relationship was healed. The romantic relationships were kind of rocky for me. Iza and Luke were cute, but I didn't see as much development as I would have liked to read throughout the book. The relationship between Lucy and her guy was also another case of insta-love. Their relationship wasn’t very believable, the attraction was there, but it definitely wasn’t love. It has the potential to be really cute, and I’d love to see how their relationship progresses, but it was not love. Overall, each character had a relationship with someone, but it really wasn’t needed! Harper and her man were just doomed from the beginning. Harper was just a self-destructing character, and she never listened to reason. Her circumstances were pretty tragic, and I liked her at the end, but I wasn’t too thrown by her demise. The killer, on the other hand, was a complete surprise. That threw me for a loop. I’m not even going to comment about the drama with their manager guy. That was just…wow. Drama. I liked how it was written and handled, though. Strange, yet interesting. I also really loved Lucy’s relationship with their musical producer. It was great to see an adult that actually loved what he did and actually wanted to help the girls do their best and survive the fame and music industry. It helped that he recognized Lucy’s passion and helped her harness her abilities to help her do the best she could. I loved that aspect to the book.
Overall, this was a pretty good book. I really enjoyed the characters for the most part, and their character arcs were really great to read. I really enjoyed the drama, even though I saw it as unnecessary. This is probably the closest to reality TV as you can get in young adult literature. It was addicting, fast paced, and I didn’t want to put it down. I pretty much finished this book in a few hours. I don’t have TV or Wi-Fi right now in our new house, so this was basically my reality-TV-fix for the week. I’m excited to see the other books that KCP Loft puts out next year.
Happy reading and happy holidays!
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