As a millennial, I was really excited to read Honey and travel back into the time capsule of the late '90s and early 2000s pop era. I don't think anybody growing up in that time didn't watch MTV, music videos, TRL, and relish in the feeling of what it would be like to be famous—a pop star in a boy band or girl group, buying magazines, and having posters on the wall. With the current hype of memoirs and documentaries highlighting the behind-the-scenes traumas and dramas of that time, I was even more excited to see what would happen in this book.

I think Honey is a chill read and enjoyable enough to pass the time. Unfortunately, I don't think the author pushed it as far as she could have. The early 2000s was a time when misogyny was rampant. The expectations of women in the media were not only clearly sexualized but stereotypical. We saw this in multiple formats of entertainment, not even touching on issues of sexuality and body image. While it felt like the author started to say something, she never pushed the conversation far enough, ultimately making the book feel very safe.

I even felt Banta’s choice to choose a white celebrity was safe, knowing there were groups like TLC and Destiny’s Child around this time. Shows like Making the Band, solo artists like JLo and Selena, and young TV stars becoming pop stars offered so many interesting angles she could've explored. This isn't to say that our main character doesn’t face obstacles, or that the characters around her don’t. It just felt like a lot of the issues weren’t unique to the industry and the main character’s voice never felt personalized or deep enough to deliver the messages the author was scratching the surface of, or to connect with.

Many of her relationships were overly sexualized, which seemed like a missed opportunity to explore other facets of misogyny in the industry. It felt like the author used sex to display misogyny when there were so many more examples that could've been used. I thought maybe the boyfriend might try to steal a song or she might have to battle with going independent, but it seemed like the most challenging aspect of her career was a relationship she knew wasn’t good for her, and the byproduct of that. Though we do see the author begin to explore themes of optics, male gaze, and sexual identity. It all came back to another hookup. For instance, when introduced to Axel, I hoped for a platonic relationship that would focus on Amber’s growth, but it turned into another physical relationship. There was also the introduction of another relationship that felt random, and unnecessary.

Even the side characters with their obstacles and issues were quickly resolved or dropped. For example, Gwen, who could’ve potentially sabotaged Amber’s career, gets an easy forgiveness without true conversational understanding. For me, this book played it safe. With a topic and an era that went so big all the time, I expected so much more.

However, I did enjoy the detailed capture of the time. The interviews, the songs, the magazine clip questionnaires really transported me back. The audiobook enhanced this experience, capturing that 2000s feeling with different voices making it feel like an episode of TRL. One thing I would've liked was actual singing for the songs. It felt odd to have music but then just spoken lyrics over top.

In general, this book is a celebration and a shining light on the 2000s and what it meant to be a rising star. In some ways, it reminded me of watching Crossroads, watching young kids find themselves, discover each other, and mature in the public eye. While I may have wanted something edgier, I think this will be successful, and I hope to see more from this author in the future.

Thank you to Celadon Books, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for this ARC!

I really wanted to love this one, since I grew up in the 90's pop ers, but unfortunately I just couldn't get into Honey and didn't end up finishing this one, and put it down at about 30%.

What a great read to have right before its publishing date! 3.5 stars.

I loved the nostalgia this one brought back and the Britney/justin undertones that came along with it. If you want to relive those early days of boy bands and late 90s hairdos, this one is for you. My inner child is fangirling all over the place - and be sure to pick it up for any of your friends that are complaining about back pain….its right in their age range!

Honey by Isabel Banta was a fantastic read! I am extremely surprised this a debut novel.

Amber Young is a rising pop star in the 90s who was first discovered by Angela Newton.
It takes Amber a few years to end up with Cloud9 where she meets her best friend Gwen Miller. This is where Amber meets the famous band group ETA and comes in contact with boy band idol Wes Kingston, who she realizes looks so familiar. This novel follows her music career from childhood to early adulthood and so on.
This book covers how unfair women are treated by the media and the impact they have on how other people view those that are in Hollywood.
Amber was portrayed differently by the media due to her body being more developed than other female artists in the industry. Amber had to suppress who she was and had to be who her label wanted her to be in order to sell her to the people. Amber found herself despite the public’s perception of her, the complex relationships she came across and the search for parental acceptance. She gained strength and determination to improve her career.

I like that the book was set up as a timeline for each chapter. It gave a better vision of when events were happening.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for providing me with a chance to read this ARC in exchange for my honesty review.

3.5/5, fun for anyone who grew up loving the pop girlies of the 90s/00s

I do wish the relationship with Axel had been explored more, as well as Amber's relationship with her own family.

⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

Through this story we get to see how Amber grows into herself and her music. We follow her story starting as a young girl wanting to sing for a living.

I loved watching Amber learn to advocate for herself and her music as she got older. It was great to see how the relationships between characters developed as they grew into adulthood.

The storylines did feel a little jumbled and unfinished at times. The plot started to fall apart a bit in the second half of the book and I found it harder to want to pick it back up and keep reading.

If you’re a fan of the 90s, pop music, and coming of age stories, this one’s for you!

Thanks to Netgalley and Celadon Books for the e-copy of this one!

Being that my coming-of-age time was in the '90s, "Honey" by Isabel Banta wasn't what I was expecting. The book had so much potential but missed the mark for me. The idea of a young girl turning into a mega pop star sounded exciting, but the execution was lacking. The characters, especially Amber Young, didn't feel fully developed, making it hard to care about their journeys. Important parts, like what it's truly like being famous, felt only halfway done.

The ending was also a letdown, using an article to wrap things up instead of a proper conclusion.

honey by isabel banta 💓 a coming-of-age story that follows the rise of singer amber young as she navigates fame in the late-90s and early-2000s era of pop music superstardom 🎤

on the surface, this novel is about how our characters handle their fame and the struggles that come along with it but looking deeper its a raw portrayal of insecurities, shame, and the relentless desire for love. this was a real reminder of the objectification endured by women, from struggles with eating disorders to societal pressures on female sexuality. honey was a nostalgic gem without being ✨cringe✨

brittney pressley’s narration was chef’s kiss, the perfect voice for this story! the audiobook also featured radio clips, song lyrics, music backdropped as if you were listening to amber’s latest hits and gossip magazine snippets which really made this story seem SO real. I caught myself wanting to google these characters!

all of the J-14 magazine talk had me reminiscing on my childhood 🥹 the fact that the magazine is discontinued now (as of jan. 2024) is a CRIME. honey was an unexpected five star read for me & I’m looking forward to what’s next for this author!

I enjoyed this coming-of-age story way more than I expected to! It was a journey reading all about Amber Young’s career from when she started out auditioning for Star Search to being one of the biggest pop singers in the world. It feels like you are reading an autobiography.

As someone who grew up in the 90s watching TRL after school with it filled with all the boy bands and pop singers, this book will give you all the nostalgia feels.

I was happy to see her friendship continue to grow between her and another pop singer, Gwen. They both had each other to lean on in this music bubble, which looked like it was much needed.

I enjoyed the lyrics, magazine interviews, and quizzes nestled in the end of most chapters.

I am very excited to see what the author will write next because I thought this was a fantastic debut novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really wish we could give half stars. A 3 is too harsh, but a 4 feels generous. I wanted to love this book. I grew up with 90s pop, boy bands, and all of the industry drama this tries to portray. I’m still trying to collect my thoughts after finishing this one, but the best I can say is that it fell a little flat for me.

There was so much potential for this storyline. It felt unique, at least compared to what I usually read. But it needed something more. It almost felt like we were following so many storylines that we couldn’t really go deep with any of them. There were definitely some missed opportunities.

I will give 5 stars for some of the character development and even more so for some of the beautiful imagery she created with word and verse. But it felt like we just slept getting intro level information and right when we started to get somewhere the scene shifted.

Overall, I enjoyed it - I just didn’t love it. I wanted to keep reading to find out what happened and how things played out. But in the end we never got the full picture. I wanted to see the role the harsh dynamics played - how did they shape her as a woman when she finally shed her youth?

#CeladonReadsTogether #ReadHoney

I have some thoughts about Honey.

1. The writing is a little pretentious for what the book is about. I completely understand we can have intelligent pop stars, but it doesn't really work for this book. I almost DNF'd it in the first couple chapters for this reason alone.
2. So many things get brushed over and never mentioned again.
3. I wish there was more about Axel and less about Wes.

All in all, this was a fun and easy read. Once I got past the writing style, I was hooked. Not the best book I've ever read and not the worst. This is a good airplane or road trip book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for the chance to review this book!

I was provided both an ebook and audio ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own. The audio narration was really well done and I enjoyed the song lyrics and interviews that were interspersed throughout giving it a multimedia feel. I would have liked if the lyrics were sung instead of spoken since this is a book about her singing, but I also understand that may not have been possible.

This is not normally the type of book I go for, but it was very well written and too me back to my youth when boy bands and pop princesses were all the rage. I was high school and college aged in the late 90's and early 2000s when Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, and Britney Spears were the up and coming single female acts and NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys were the all the rage. The ladies were also pitted against the media all the time for different reasons. I'm sure there were others but those are the ones the immediately spring to mind when I think back to that time and how they were portrayed in the media and as I was reading Amber's story.

Amber is our main character and this is told from her perspective as she seeks a solo career as a female pop star. She was discovered at an early age by a talent agent and struggled to break onto the scene among the other stars at the time. She has the talent, but she struggles to find her voice in other ways to find real success. She also struggles to find support, friendship, and love as she tours and tries to build a fan base.

This very much an adult book as it deals with some very adult topics like drugs, alcohol, and sex throughout the book as Amber faces all of those as she tours. While she is comfortable in her own skin, she is over sexualized by her label at a young age, while the other girls her age are able to hold onto their innocence a bit longer. She is called nasty names by the media and doesn't have much support to deal with the negativity of the media and the loneliness that develops when she's on tour for months at a time. She also has issues with her self-worth and connecting with people and building real relationships.

This was very well written and if you are a fan of pop music this reads almost like a memoir despite it being fiction. I really appreciated Amber's character development as the story progressed. This deals with alot of heavy topics, so I'd look up some trigger warnings ahead of time.

Honey is such a fun nostalgic book to read for a millennial like me. I grew up in the 90s and the early 2000s and this book felt like taking a trip down memory lane. I enjoyed the chapters written as years and the characters who mirrored some of my favorite pop artists from the late 90s. It was interesting to see the drama they got into and experience it as an adult rather than a child who didn't really understand any of that back then. It was well written and very engaging and had my attention instantly. However, after giving it some thought and ruminating on the last half of the book, I feel slightly disappointed with the trajectory of this story. I loved the characters and the relationships told throughout her rise to fame, but I just feel like there wasn't ever a pivotal moment or anything super intense that happened. The pacing of the book felt the same throughout and then once I finished it, I just felt like it was missing a plot twist and then an ending that made me feel like we finally got a true glimpse into the fmc's mind and life. It wrapped up so quickly that I'm let wondering what happened next and if she was ever really happy. I'm debating between 3 and 4 stars and ultimately thinking this book deserves a 3.5 star rating. It just lacked something truly great in the last half to make me bump it up to a full 4 star.

I thoroughly enjoyed Isabel Banta’s cleverly written debut novel. “Honey” puts a face to the celebrity icons who have been glorified, villainized, and objectified by the music industry and media. Throughout, Banta peels away the layers while skillfully showing the intense pressure and manipulation used on young pop stars to meld them into someone else’s ideal while revealing the cost of this on young women who are placed on a pedestal to idolize, criticize, and dissect.

Written in first person from Amber’s point of view made me want to google Amber, Gwen, ETA, and Axel to find the truth behind the fiction and listen to their music.  I wanted to read this book slowly to absorb the nuances and contemplate what was happening.

The inclusion of lyrics, magazine quizzes, interviews, and online forums helped to place the narrative in the 90s and early 2000s (the audio book included music too).  The audiobook narration was expertly narrated by #brittanypressley.  The more I learned of Amber’s journey the more I wanted her to succeed while allowing her personality, hopes, and dreams to thrive.

“Honey” makes me analyze the media I read as a teen while I watched MTV and CMT to hear the latest songs of my favourite musicians.  It makes me want to be a voice against an industry who objectified and treated their stars as a “product” to be consumed rather than a real person with hopes, dreams, and creativity to be nurtured.  Throughout, the novel looks at the objectification of women, double standards between men and women, power and perceived power, friendships, trusting oneself, reaching for your dreams, love, sexuality, and acceptance of who you are and all you can be.

“Honey” will make you nostalgic for your teens, cheering for the friendships in Amber’s (and your) lives, and it will make you thankful for having some normalcy in your own life.

Thank you @celadonbooks @macmillan.audio and @netgalley for the advance digital copies of #honey by @isabel.banta


#isabelbanta #femaleauthor #femalewriter #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #fiction #bookreview #bookrecommendation #youshouldreadthis #comingofage #musicbooks #celadonbooks #netgalley #macmillanaudio @britpressley

Honey by Isabel Banta: A Nostalgic Trip Down Memory Lane

In her debut coming-of-age novel Honey, Isabel Banta takes readers on a trip back to the golden days of music in the 1990s and 2000s. As a huge music fan myself, I was immediately drawn to the nostalgic premise of this story. The book follows Amber, a young woman from a small town who dreams of making it big as a singer-songwriter. Through Amber's journey navigating the challenges of the cutthroat music industry, Banta transports readers back to the eras of Britney Spears, NSYNC, and other popular artists that dominated the airwaves.

The story highlights both the trials of pursuing a career in entertainment, as well as Amber's personal growth during this transformative period of self-discovery in the big city. At times while reading, I found myself silently urging Amber to make different choices, hoping she would stand up for herself with more strength and confidence in certain difficult situations. While her journey of learning hard lessons is authentic to the experience of a young woman coming into her own, there were moments I wished she possessed more self-assurance.

Overall, Honey offers an enjoyable nostalgic trip down memory lane for any music fan, while also serving as a compelling coming-of-age story about chasing one's dreams. Though the protagonist's journey doesn't always follow the path readers may hope for, the novel realistically depicts both triumphs and pitfalls one may face on the road to achieving their goals. Banta transports readers back to the eras of yesteryear through her heartfelt characters and tribute to the music that shaped generations.

Honey is riveting, exciting, fascinating, eye-opening, and disturbing. It’s a pull-the-curtain-back look into the world of girl groups and boy bands. Beyond the glitz and the glamour and the adoring fans to the constant competition and uncertainty, the fear that you’ll be cut, that you won’t be enough. The backstabbing, the money grubbing, the false friends. The life on the road that isn’t jet-setting luxury in five-star hotels but bus after bus and motel after motel.

There are probably a handful of super, super, superstars that are really in charge. For everyone else the idea of control is a fleeting illusion and often comes back to smack you when you least expect it. You’re always at the mercy of your manager, studio and record company executives, your family and the fickleness of the fans.

Honey is a book that makes you lean back and think maybe these stars aren’t really living on Easy Street; maybe they might envy you a little bit, too. Thanks to Celadon Books for providing an advance copy of Honey via NetGalley. It was a page-turner start to finish. In fact it seems every book Celadon Books publishes is like that. Thanks for allowing me to be a Celadon Reader and have the opportunity to read so many satisfying books. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own.

This book was such a great look into the complexity of being a child star and how the media can easily manipulate people to hold stars a certain way. I appreciated the way the story mimicked real stars we have watched either be traumatized from being a child star or stars who the media has turned on. I will say this book is not for the faint of heart, as there are so many complex stories of love, loss, trauma, and pain that people need to be careful and read the trigger warnings.

Amber Young has a gifted voice and is ecstatic when she is invited to join the girl band Cloud9. It provides her the escape she craves from her small town. But as a teenager in the 1990's Amber is in for the ride of her life as she navigates the ups and downs of the music industry, the highs and lows of being in the public eye and the exploitation that runs rampant for any pop star.

I had high hopes for this one as it was set in the time that I was coming of age. It felt reminiscent of the time period, but I had a hard time empathizing with Amber and the decisions that she made, even knowing that they were representative of the actions made by pop stars of the time. It definitely had vibes from Brittany Spears' memoir and I think that was what the author was going for but I just felt it was lacking a little in something I can't quite place my finger on.

Thank you to Celadon Books for an early review copy of this book.

This was a basic rise to fame and learn lifes unpleasant lessons on the way up. It is set in the 90's so I loved that. I was not blown away from this book it's easy to read and the characters are ok. I would read at a pool or on vacation when you want something easy to pick up and put down without trying to remember too much. #NetGalley #Honey #90s

Honey follows the pop-star career of Amber Young from her childhood star search days to her solo career.

And it just didn't work for me. There really was no discerable arc for any of the characters. The conflict between Amber and Gwen seemed especially manufactured. It touched on themes of sexualization and agency in the media, but didn't really explore these so the view/scope of them just seems sanitized.

Isabel Banta writes a lovely sentence--the prose was nice. But overall, I found the plot lacking.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!