This book has been a great listening experience. Thanks to the author and the publisher for bringing this book to life.

If you care at all for music, diplomacy, history and creativity - it would be saddening to miss out on this autobiographical journey of a well to do American girl who does anything but fit the profile of the image that may already be developing in your mind. Rather than putz around shopping in LA, Joanna Stingray takes a stab at smuggling underground Russian music to the US on several occasions and basically acting as a conduit for the spread of a variety of music regardless of the law in an act to expose Russian life and engage both countries. I’m still in awe of this woman since finishing, but moreso regretful that I never once heard of her until now. She is a music pioneer and her own music and creativity in making music videos still stands today. I spent the majority of this book looking up songs and videos and photos and news of her. She paints a vibrant cast of characters that greatly impacted her life and we hear some familiar names like Molly Ringwald, David Bowie and MTV along the way. Make sure you get to know the most important name in this novel, though, Joanna Stingray.

This book was narrated extremely well, you really get a feel for the music. It would be a good book to have playing in the background, or as a one time listen. I am happy I listened to the book but you do have to have a love of music to enjoy

I heard about this book from a podcast interview with the author. She has such an interesting and unique life experience, and I was excited to see they finally made an audiobook! You definitely get a feel for the music, events, excitement and gossip among these musicians at the time, making it a fun read. However, if you are looking for answers to basic questions like, how did you convince the Russian government to let you in dozens of times? or anything else about the actual politics surrounding these events, it's not in this book.

Joanna manages to make what should be an interesting story so very dull. She says near the end of the book "like most things that had happened in my life this far, the opportunity fell in my lap". Things just happening to Joanna does not an interesting story make. Other than that it's endless descriptions of concerts and music videos, her parents paying for things and Joanna making everything about her, including the death of one of her friends. She does not give the reader any reason to like her, or to feel anything at all about her. It would have been nice to understand why Judy, her sister, was also constantly travelling to Russia. While Joanna talks endlessly about feeling at home in Russia, and Russia being her motherland, she doesn't really bother to learn much Russian - even when she marries a Russian man who doesn't speak English. That section of the book really dragged, I think it was meant to read like a great love story, but it felt like maybe they had one thing in common (if you know what I mean...)
Joanna appears as a self-centred American (so very American) nepo baby, romanticising communist Russia, constantly describing it as her "wonderland" while trying to save them through rock music.

I was given an audio copy in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. The narrator was very good, so that's something.

I requested this book because of the narrator, Cassandra Campbell so naturally, I loved the narrator! The book itself was so interesting too! It was a quick read- well, listen and I was fascinated by the story. Highly recommend!