Perfect for fans of:
- Fierce girl bands like Fifth Harmony, Blackpink, Destiny’s Child
- Second chance romances
- Queer extravaganza
- Fandom, fanfic and ship wars
Review:
“She’s been so focused on the endgame, she forgot how much the means matter. She forgot that there’s almost always more than one way to win, and that deciding there’s only one path usually leads to failure, not success.”
It Goes Like This was such a compulsively readable book. I bet I’m not the only one who picks up this book and immediately feels sad because there isn’t (to my knowledge) an all queer girlband out there whose concerts we can go to and support. The kind of representation that offers to readers and to society at large is incredible—to think that future generations might grow up to see bands of queer individuals coming together and play music and just be themselves, unapologetically, openly, and fiercely. It puts a smile on my face to think that we’ve come so far from when someone coming out as part of the LGBTQIAP+ community was shamed or became a scandal to, simply, this: a hypnotic YA contemporary about four queer best friends who become an internationally famous girl band.
Of course, this book is not all sunshine. Really, this story begins more than a year after Moonlight Overthrow broke up, with all the members strewn around the US, barely speaking to each other. With the help of flashbacks and a devastating storm that brings the ex-best friends back together, the reader can slowly piece together the reasons why the band broke apart and most of them stopped speaking to each other.
I think anyone who’s ever been invested in a band when they grew up *cough* or fell into a fandom craze during a pandemic *cough* only for that band to break up will fall head over heels in love with this book. It Goes Like This shows the highs and lows of friendship, fame, and fandom, and each of the POVs gives you something to root for. It’s a conundrum how you can both be glad the band broke up and devastated that it did, but somehow, that was my experience reading Moreland’s debut.
While there’s a second chance romance in here that is beautifully paced and an absolute highlight, I can’t really talk about it without spoiling anything, so I want to shine light on the incredibly friendship dynamics that Moreland explores in this. From Eva, Celeste, Gina and Steph’s friendship as a group, to their individual connections and their friends outside of that circle, everything was so beautifully diverse and fleshed out that it really read like a love letter to friendship and platonic love and for that alone, this one’s not to be missed. We explore the reasons why some people in the band wanted to break up, but we also get to see what they miss about not being in Moonlight Overthrow anymore and it’s having their best friends at each other’s sides.
I don’t want to spoil the reason why Steph decides to step out of the spotlight for good, but it was one of my favourite parts of the book how Moreland explored expectations and especially those geared toward queer celebrities to “fit the narrative,” if you will. When you’re out to the world, and especially when you’re in the media on a regular basis, it becomes not only a privilege but also a hefty responsibility to “stay in your lane” so the media won’t lean up against you. Steph’s decision to quit the band was so understandable and shone some light on the industry’s double standards for queer people—on the one hand, they celebrate you for being open, yet on the other they’re dissecting everything you do.
All in all, this book was an absolute winner for me. In the beginning, I flew through the pages to find out why Moonlight Overthrow broke up, but somewhere in between, I became more invested in their friendship and their reconciliation than I did in the band’s future and if you’ve ever been in the One Direction fandom, I think you know why that’s such an important feeling.
An homage to friendship, fame and fandom, It Goes Like This invites you behind the scenes of a queer girl band’s breakup and shows that some bonds are meant to last forever.
It Goes Like This is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of May 18th 2021.
Will you be picking up It Goes Like This? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
A heartfelt YA debut about four queer teens—ex-best friends and ex-members of an internationally famous band—who must reunite to rebuild their hometown after a devastating storm.
Eva, Celeste, Gina, and Steph used to think their friendship was unbreakable. After all, they’ve been though a lot together, including the astronomical rise of Moonlight Overthrow, the world-famous queer pop band they formed in middle school, never expecting to headline anything bigger than the county fair.
But after a sudden falling out leads to the dissolution of the teens’ band, their friendship, and Eva and Celeste’s starry-eyed romance, nothing is the same. Gina and Celeste step further into the spotlight, Steph disappears completely, and Eva, heartbroken, takes refuge as a songwriter and secret online fangirl…of her own band. That is, until a storm devastates their hometown, bringing the four ex-best friends back together. As they prepare for one last show, they’ll discover whether growing up always means growing apart.
