the nostalgia!! This book brought me back to the early 2000s and all the complicated feelings of teenage girls growing up. Even though the story was centered around popstars and has so many references to TRL, MTV, award shows, etc that most people can't relate to - it was really about the emotions and relationships for me. Made me think about female friendships and the people that really get you (which is so important whether you're a famous popstar or not)!

I was so expecting to love this because I’ve loved other books channeling these vibes, however this one felt too surface level for me. I loved the late 90s and early 2000s look into the music industry. It was easy to feel the author’s influences here. I just felt like there wasn’t a reason to root for the main character. I never felt invested in what happened because the writing kept me at arms length. And it felt like sex was used to keep the book flowing. I did like the breaks of throw back quizzes, magazine interviews, and song snippets. While it wasn’t for me, I know others are enjoying it, and I’m so glad a debut was picked by BOTM.

Unfortunately I just did not feel this book was very interesting. Although it wasn't technically a long book, I just still felt it was too long.

Thank you to NetGalley, Isabel Banta, and Celadon Books for a copy in exchange for a review.

This is a fictional novel, but it's easy to imagine any 90's pop star (I kept thinking of Britney) as the MC.
This book has alllll the 90s nostalgia.
You may enjoy if you:
Came home from school and immediately turned on TRL
Shopped at Delias
Had a crush on a boy band star with frosted tips 🤣
Etc.
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book, when Amber was younger and first starting out. The rest of the book dragged for me a bit and just kinda seemed to be about her sex life.
Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for the ARC!

Unexpectedly really loved this book - being thrown into the life of a 90s/early 2000s pop star was so fun. Not to mention the amount of things they went through that women still deal with today, although not to the same extent in some aspects.

Media scrutiny and female double standards are still alive and well, as we all know, so in a lot of ways I feel like everyone should read this book. Not every female public figure is supposed to be a role model to all other females. When the media decides you’re one thing, they’ll always ask you why you aren’t something else instead. And this happened constantly to Amber and Gwen.

Audio was amazingggg (Brittney pressley so obviously) and I loved the interview/song portions of it. Kinda made everything come together especially when depicting other media outlets.

Overall, I highly recommend to all millennials. It will bring you right back 😊

Many thanks to Celadon and NetGalley for electronic and physical copies of Honey in exchange for my honest opinion. This book will publish in a week and a half, but free libraries everywhere have copies in them today!
I had the opportunity to read this earlier with a group of buddy readers, and I found it to be an engaging read. If you’re an elder millennial who came of age with Britney and Christina and BSB and NSync, I bet you will enjoy this book. It reminded me of Willa Ford’s I Wanna Be Bad, Jessica Simpson’s Irresistible, and Britney Spears’ Overprotected all mixed together.
Honey follows Amber Young from Morristown, NJ, when she is discovered by an agent at her middle school talent show through her rise to pop stardom. Honey is the nickname Amber’s producer uses when speaking to her. The reader witnesses Amber growing up and growing into her role in the public eye. While this subject might sound surface-level, the writing elevates it to true literary fiction. There were multiple sentences which I paused to re-read 2-3 times because of their lyrical nature - and I am not one to typically do that when I read! I needed to read a big chunk to get invested, but once I was about 25% in, I barely set it down. With nostalgia and gorgeous writing, I recommend this debut - I can’t wait to see where the author goes next!

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC - so well done and powerful; it’s a tale as old as time but hearing it from the voices so often silenced (ie women) is incredible. Really enjoyed this!

2.5 rounded up. The beginning was super fun because it started off as a fun throwback to the early 2000s, but then lost that quickly. Amber comes off as flat yet super whiny and I couldn't connect with her at all. This had so much potential but just ended up being a flat romance about a woman who is constantly chasing the next man.

2.5

This was interesting. Well I wanted to love this it’s an era I am nostalgic on I just felt like the overwriting and try hardness of it all lost the plot.

Good bones bad execution, needed a good editor to cut the fluff.

Thank you Celadon Books and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader e-Copy of Honey by Isabel Banta.

This book is about Amber Young’s rise to pop princess fame. It’s a coming-of-age story that is both juicy and spicy! It’s a simple and easy to digest read for the most part. There are some emotional moments that don’t require much effort to recover from. I liked the pacing, and the plot kept me interested enough. I also liked some of the more tender scenes in this book, as those were the ones I connected with the most.

The format is reminiscent of Daisy Jones & The Six, but the storyline is mostly devoid of hard drugs and heavy alcohol use that we often read about in books like this. Amber’s character development is the most pronounced, and more against the grain compared to the the side characters who are predictable stereotypes of pop superstars. I thought the songs were mediocre. But I enjoyed reading about the songwriting and song production process.

This is a 3.5⭐️ read for me. I liked it but didn’t love it. I think where it fell short for me was the fleeting nature of Amber’s interactions. The growth of her relationships felt stunted. Overall, it was challenging for me to build any attachment to the characters including Amber, and I was not fully invested in the storyline.

This was an interesting book for me. I have to say the boy band/pop star princess thing always passed me by so I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this book. I started this one on audiobook and I almost wish I had stuck with that because I love that narrator and I think she helped me see Amber as a whole person and not just see her poor choices. But I’m on vacation and doing the least audiobooking and I’m not patient so I finished with a physical copy. I did sometimes find the pace a little slow. I struggled to understand some of the characters’ motivations at times. I loved the inclusion of other media especially the songs and the commentary about them. It really helped to bring this story to life. Amber always wanted to sing, but after a brief failure as a child she lost hope. As a teenager floundering in school she reaches for her dream and is shocked to hear she is on her way to California to be a part of a girls’ group. This story is Amber’s coming of age combined with coming into herself as an artist/performer. Overall I gave it 3.5 stars rounded up because I read it in one sitting.

DNF

I did not feel super connected to the characters. It was interesting for the nostalgia, references, and a bird eye's view of that time period socially and culturally but found myself a bit bored given its repetitive nature.

I have been so excited to read this book along with the #CeladonReadsTogether program. It was a fun nod to the 1990s - I loved all the music and tv references. It also made me sad for all of the pop stars of the era that were judged for having sex or not, and for how they dressed, the ways they were analyzed about their bodies, etc.

HONEY is a story about Amber Young who, after multiple auditions, is asked to be part of a forming girl band group. She makes a lifelong friend in one of the other group members, who immediately goes out on her own. Amber wants to do the same, but doesn’t believe in herself or know herself enough to know what she wants.

A lot of the book deals with her feelings about sex, losing her virginity and how it affects her in the industry and her relationships with other men.

The book includes song lyrics and I think aspires to the world of Daisy Jones (but a 90s pop star version). I would have liked to have known more about Amber and who she was apart from her feelings about sex and fame. But I thought it was a fun read, nonetheless.

This was a fun quick book! It is coming of age but has pop culture, celebrity, and family dynamics. I really felt for the girls as they faced challenges alone and together.

We follow a young pop singer, Amber, who is navigating growing up, becoming famous, dating, starting a career, and supporting her family. Amber leans into a fellow singer for advice and even when the media tried tear them Apart their friendship was a highlight.I really liked the way the story was told and all the things Amber goes through are quite relatable even though her life is not average at all. Great girl power, happy ending.

Great flow and emotional relatable in all the best ways!

I loved every moment of this book and didn't want it to end.
The writing style was absolutely captivating and pulled my instantly into the story. The FMC was firey, independent and extremely likeable. I was honestly very attached to all the characters, I think the author did a great job of giving each character things you could like and connect with.
It was really fun to get a behind the scenes look at the life of a pop star and see how hard and lonely it probably really is.
I also really enjoyed the coming of age that this story gave us, we get to truly see our FMC make lots of mistakes, grow up and find herself. I love how much we actually got with this story, I think the author really fit a lot into this short span of book. I definitely did not want this book to end, I would have been thrilled to continue reading about our characters.
My favorite part was the end of the book, where the author gave us a page that looked like a Wikipedia page on our FMC and it answered all the questions an epilogue would have.
Thank you so much Netgalley and Isabel Banta for my gifted copy, I am leaving this review on my own.

Unfortunately this was not my cup of tea. The writing was a little disjointed, and the characters were two dimensional. It was hard to relate or care for them. Honestly when I was a few chapters in, I forgot the main characters name multiple times and had to go back. I feel like it rushed into the story and didn't give a good background of the characters and the interactions btw characters felt very robotic.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

As a late 90’s baby, I was so excited to read this book! And it did not disappoint. I felt like I was growing up with Amber, learning and making mistakes right along side her. I’m glad I was reading a digital copy on my phone because I legitimately could not put it down. I’m excited to read more from Isabel Banta!

Thanks to NetGalley and Celadon Books for sending me an ARC 💛

Oh, how I loved this! Anyone who loved/loves '90s/2000s pop music should read this.

Banta does a great job of capturing what the world sees and focuses on with young stars, especially during this time period. She also humanizes the stars and makes a clear statement of what's real vs what is perceived.

In addition to enjoyable narrative writing, I liked how articles, songs, interviews etc. were sprinkled throughout the book. It was a fun format and also helped move the story along.

I am two years older than Amber so I was instantly pulled into this book and could picture everything about this era. Here's a list of things that came flooding back to me, for better or for worse.

- Star Search
- flipping through CDs
- MTV's TRL
- the normalcy of discussing the sex lives/virginity of young pop stars (WHY?)
- magazine quizzes
- mall performances
- the movie Ghost
- Felicity
- tiny iPods

*I received a copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this opportunity*

<I>She is, as she will insist in every interview, just an ordinary girl. But America has a way of making its own gods. It revels in it. It lights the bonfire and watches the flames lick the sacrifice.</I>

Amber Young, is another pretty face from another small town. She isn't exceptional at dancing, or making people laugh-- she's known in her hometown for her singing voice and her boobs. However, the opportunity of a lifetime strikes when she's given the chance to join Cloud9, a girl-group band based in LA; and from there, Amber drives her career faster and further than she ever imagined possible. Branded a sex-symbol by her record label, Amber grapples with her budding sexuality on display for all of America to feast upon and struggles to connect with the revolving door of people in her life.

Brassy and sassy, HONEY by Isabel Banta sheds light on the music industry in the late 90s/early 2000s-- specifically its treatment and exploitation of young pop stars. HONEY also explores mysongny, America's ironic treatment of famous women (be sexy and risky on camera but HOW DARE YOU be caught actually having sex in a consensual relationship), the corrupt and often stalkerish behavior of paparazzi and the consumption/judgement of unconsensual photographs. This book tackles a lot-- but it never felt overwhelming or preachy. This is Amber's story, told through Amber's eyes and mind and heart.

Amber is young, ("so, so young" as she calls herself) and is forced to grow up on display; but her naivety is never really lost throughout the course of the story-- something I think is incredibly realistic for stars that shoot into fame at a young age, but could be off putting for some readers because her decisions aren't "mature". However, her journey from teenager pop star to something more was moving. HONEY was a book I picked up and couldn't put back down.

Honey takes me straight back to high school. Those were the days of the Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and more. And while this book doesn't pattern any of the characters straight off of any of these real life people and the persona the projected to the public, for anyone that lived and breathed that music during that time, you can see pieces of these real people get melded into the fictional characters. It's a behind the scenes view of what real pop stars go through where they are molded into certain personalities by their labels and management so that they're filling a niche for every fan, whether that's really who the person is or not. It also explores how relationships are manufactured by the same people to build interest and publicity and how difficult it makes it for very real people to have very real relationships. In this book Amber is branded as the bad girl, wears skimpy clothes and doesn't shy away from intimacy in her encounters with men. Those are elements are personality and ones she doesn't feel bad about, or even think she should feel bad about, but gets attacked in the media for not being a good girl like her friend Gwen or fellow pop star Savannah. This is something that blows up when she gets increasingly involved with an old acquaintance that has been hand-picked to be Gwen's relationship. It's interesting and insightful when Banta mixes in the media elements, magazine and TRL interviews, reviews, quizzes, etc. that allow you to step away from Amber's perspective and be reminded of how she and the others are being portrayed publicly. I wish more time had been devoted to how Amber really felt how she's portrayed and explored her sometimes complicated relationship with Gwen more - I think that would have made it more enjoyable on a deeper level, but it was still fun to read on beach read type of level. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.