Audrey, Wait! review

Audrey, Wait!
Robin Benway
April 10th 2008
Razorbill

California high school student Audrey Cuttler dumps self-involved Evan, the lead singer of a little band called The Do-Gooders. Evan writes, “Audrey, Wait!” a break-up song that’s so good it rockets up the billboard charts. And Audrey is suddenly famous!

Now rabid fans are invading her school. People is running articles about her arm-warmers. The lead singer of the Lolitas wants her as his muse. (And the Internet is documenting her every move!) Audrey can't hang out with her best friend or get with her new crush without being mobbed by fans and paparazzi.

Take a wild ride with Audrey as she makes headlines, has outrageous amounts of fun, confronts her ex on MTV, and gets the chance to show the world who she really is.

I think I'm a little bit in love with this book. I always knew that I'd like it - it's exactly my kind of book, but I didn't think I'd get this into it or love it this much. I am about 90% certain though that that's entirely due to Audrey.

Audrey is just the best. Like, think of all your favourite contemporary heroines and squish them into one snarky, sweary, complex blonde girl and you have Audrey. She may not be to some people's tastes, and some people might just think she's not any different from any other contemp heroine (because sometimes when you've read so many sort of 'light' books in a row, they can all sort of blur into one) but she clicked with me. I loved her foul language, and her snark was so on point that I would just crack up laughing. I loved her passion for music, and I lovedlovedloved her at the very end because, let's face it, if you have read this book, that was the best way to end it ever. Seriously. Audrey knows how to stick it to the man.

It feels like I say this about every book ever, but I adored the side characters. James was way more interesting than I thought he'd be, and he had way more personality than I thought he would have. When we first meet him in the book, he's just the awkward guy that Audrey works with at this awful ice cream place called the Scooper Dooper (seriously), but he's actually really funny and sweet. Victoria was probably my favourite, though, along with her boyfriend Jonah. She's just crazy, and I mean that in the best possible way. But I also really liked the conflict (I felt like I should put in at least one sort of fancy word because so far this review is basically the equivalent of lots of smiley emoticons and exclamation marks and over entuhiasm) between her and Audrey about the whole Audrey being kind of famous thing. Audrey just wants to keep under wraps after a bad experience at a gig, but Victoria kind of wants to exploit it to get free stuff despite Audrey's feelings. It was nice to get to see the two sides of it, even if I am pretty firmly on Audrey's side because who actually wants to be hounded by paparazzi and constantly judged by people who don't even know you?

Which kind of brings me to my third point about why I loved Audrey, Wait! (apart from writing out the title a lot. What? I like exclamation marks!) was the sort of uniqueness of the plot. It's not like I've never read a book set around fame or the music industry before, because I have and I love them, but this sort of brought a new take to it. Audrey literally is just a 'normal' girl - she wasn't trying to get famous. Like, she didn't want to be an actress or a musician or actively put herself in the public eye at all. She'd just been thrown into it because of this great song that her (ex)boyfriend wrote after she broke up with him. I don't know, I just thought that that was a really interesting take on the whole fame thing. It was good. Also, because Audrey is awesome and has an awesome taste music, I found a load of great songs that I'd never heard before that were in this book, which is always a good thing (though please, why is there a significant lack of Audrey, Wait! based playlists on the internet. I would like one. Muchly.) 

I know that this is fairly short and riddled with unnecessary parenthesis, but it pretty accurately conveys my inexplicably strong feelings about this book which I had not been expecting to have. Seriously, if you like books about music or about awesome characters and are looking for something awesome to read (and you haven't read this already like me) the read it. NOW.