Meet your new favourite punk band—The Brightsiders.
Alfie, Ryan, and Emmy love music and they are close friends who also rock every music hall. Unfortunately not everything is just rainbow and glitter. To be a rockstar with a mostly young audience means that you have to be the perfect role model at all time. Underage drinking does not fit into that picture and being involved in an accident just makes it worse.
Emmy is in need of a break. She has to lay low, but to go home to her parents turns out to be a big mistake. You should stop drinking, but your parents are alcoholics and pity themselves for not being the biggest musicians of their time because Emmy happened.
She tries so hard to not end like her parents and hopes that she will be finally understood by everyone. Emmy wishes she could be like her best friend Alfie, who is out and tells everyone he is gender queer, while she wants to confess that she is bisexual.
“I’ve never felt 100 percent like a girl, but I’m not a guy, either. And I don’t see why I have to fit. Why should try to change myself to suit someone else’s binary? It’s like trying to fit a galaxy into a glass jar. I don’t want to be poked and prodded into a glass jar. How am I supposed to breathe like that? right now, I’m poking holes in the lid, letting the light and air in and freeing pieces of me star by star. And one day, I’m just going to shatter it.”
Thankfully her 18th birthday is just around the corner and she could not be happier that her friends planned a week of holiday on a yacht so she can be away from everything that pulls her down. But this free time comes also with time to think. How could Emmy miss that Alfie is a pretty good-looking guy? With not much space to get out of each other’s way, how do you deal with these thoughts? Is it wise to fall in love with your best friend you know from childhood? On the other hand, no one understands you better as he can.
This is the second novel by Jen Wilde, Australian writer, geek, and big fangirl. Her geek contemporary romance Queens of Geek was published in 2017 and this novel focuses on diversity and acceptance.
Jen Wilde has captured our current society perfectly and shows us what we should change. Misunderstanding leads to complication and to not be honest to yourself and others can end in the loss friendships. On the other hand, you should not listen to those who only want to manipulate or take advantage of you. Gladly Emmy learns this and stops hiding behind her rockstar behaviour. Her fans love her for that even more.
You can follow Wilde on her website and on her social media channels Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
The Brightsiders is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
Have you read The Brightsiders? Or will you be checking it out? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
A teen rockstar has to navigate family, love, coming out, and life in the spotlight after being labeled the latest celebrity trainwreck in Jen Wilde’s quirky and utterly relatable novel.
As a rock star drummer in the hit band The Brightsiders, Emmy King’s life should be perfect. But there’s nothing the paparazzi love more than watching a celebrity crash and burn. When a night of partying lands Emmy in hospital and her girlfriend in jail, she’s branded the latest tabloid train wreck.
Luckily, Emmy has her friends and bandmates, including the super-swoonworthy Alfie, to help her pick up the pieces of her life. She knows hooking up with a band member is exactly the kind of trouble she should be avoiding, and yet Emmy and Alfie Just. Keep. Kissing.
Will the inevitable fallout turn her into a clickbait scandal (again)? Or will she find the strength to stand on her own?
