Rockoholic

Jody is obsessed.

She’s spent years dreaming of the moment when the lead singer of her favorite band, Jackson Gatlin, will realize that he’s in love with her. She’s been counting on the moment, even though her best friend, Mac, (who may or may not be gay), thinks she’s being ridiculous. But who cares? She has tickets to see Jackson’s show! Of course, things don’t go according to plan, and Jody ends up accidentally “kidnapping” Jackson, much to Mac’s horror and Jody’s delight.

I have never, in my life, read a book or thought it was possible to write a book about kidnapping someone via candy bar. That basic premise, while seemingly unlikely, is just so hilarious and over the top that it works. And what comes after the kidnapping was completely different from what I’d expected.

Rochoholic, despite its cutesy, girl-obsessed-with-superstar exterior, is a book with a lot of heart. I’ll admit that I was completely blown away by how C.J. Skuse handled the topic.

Jody, the main character, starts off as a celebrity-stalker girl, who’s so ridiculous in her obssession that you can’t help but roll your eyes and know change is a-comin’. And it did, because it turns out that the awesome Jackson is a paranoid drug-dependent mess—hardly a teen girl’s idea of romantic.

So Jody’s struggling with the downfall of her idol, and learning how to be herself, all while juggling her job, her best friend, and suspicious reporters who want to know where Jackson went, if he’s dead or not. Jody’s growth as a person from beginning to end of the novel is huge, and as she comes into her own, I couldn’t help cheering her on.

Rockoholic is actually a lot more serious than I would have thought possible, and I loved Skuse’s portrayal of her characters and how they interact with one another. And while, yes, it is possible that this book’s basic premise is a bit silly and clichéd, I thought it was genuine and real at the same time.

My biggest complaint is the typical DPS—even a book as awesome as Rockholic is not immune! Jody’s mum is mostly absent from the picture, and she’s completely oblivious to the fact that a 27 year-old American superstar is living in her garage, and has been doing so for about 2 weeks. Once again: why do authors chose plots that, in order to work, require the parent’s completely idiocy? It gives parents a bad name.

But, like I said, Rockoholic is an awesome book. Jody’s character is amazing, Mac, Jackson, and Cree were fantastic supporting characters, and the story, overall is sweet and touching and cuddly. I loved this book.

A few weeks ago, sixteen-year-old Emily Baker got a book deal with Penguin to take her One Direction fanfic Loving the Band and turn it into an original novel, which will go on sale as an ebook November 1st. As the editor who acquired it said, they'd been looking to commission an author who could tap into the boy band mania for some time. I have a boatload of issues with this deal, the legal implications of it, and the publishing house did it rather than the author doing a pull-to-publish deal first, but that's another story.

Rockoholic is a distant relative of that story. Distant because it did not start out as a fanfic and it's more focused on rock stars than boy bands. Also, the trope of a girl meeting members of the band and one or more members falling in love with her? It gets torn to shreds in Rockoholic to great effect. Equal parts funny and sad, Skuse's novel is a great way to whittle away the hours and see how our idols are rarely who we expect them to be.

The initial premise of Jody kidnapping her rock idol Jackson Gatlin with a Curly Wurly bar (they look like this) requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief to make it work. As Jody informs us, it's also a melted Curly Wurly bar, so it isn't as straight as it appears in the picture, and Jackson believes it's a knife. He would need to be pretty heavily strung out on drugs for that to seem possible. To be fair, he is strung out on drugs enough to strip naked and toss all his clothes off a bridge shortly thereafter.

For the funny half of the novel, Jody's interactions with Jackson can be funny at times and the punny/silly chapter titles (Must Hang Sally; Softly, Softly, Catch a Junkie; Please Don't Feed the Diva) managed a few giggles out of me too. It's not a difficult story to get invested in, especially once the rock-star-falls-in-love-with-groupie trope starts getting subverted.

On the other hand, it's a quiet exploration of how fame has changed Jackson and turned him into a drug addict who has to take red berries just to get on stage for his shows and then take blackberries to calm him down again. He used to love the spotlight and making music, but now it only makes him miserable. Worse, he can't escape. The band manager's ire at Jackson's disappearance leaves one band member with broken bones, an ambulance woman in need of plastic surgery, and a roadie on life support after being beaten to a pulp. I don't blame Jackson for refusing to go back to the band. As he comes down off the drugs and starts to be a person rather than an idea (and a demanding one that that, considering how he treats Jody initially), he starts to take over the story.

Still, Jody has her own story that takes the stage. Her grandfather has just died (of crashing through the window of a lingerie store in his wheelchair, natch; just the way he'd want to go), she has a dead-end job at a daycare center, and she has a lot of issues with her mom and sister. The grandfather's death felt a little like a plot device sometimes, such as when Jody's inheritance from him moves the plot along, but more often, it feels like something real that has affected her and leads her to all the places she goes in this novel.

But Jody. Oh, Jody. Her schemes to hide Jackson range from taking pictures of him in the Italian District to make it look like he's in Italy (which backfires badly in the end) to telling a reporter who knows the photos were taken in the Italian District that she was actually in Italy to take the photos (which can easily be debunked by talking to people) and all of them are terrible. She's such a dim bulb that she no longer lights up and it can be difficult to deal with. She is rightfully called out on her stupidity throughout the story, but some ideas were just too dumb for a good call-out to make me forgive.

And deciding her best friend was gay because of his interests and holding that position for years? Ugh. I'm glad everyone told her off on how dumb that was.

I'd be happy to read more of C.J. Skuse's novel, provided the main characters have a few more brain cells than Jody.

When the blurb says that Jody's addicted to Jackson Gatlin, frontman of The Regulators, that was putting it mildly. She's quite obsessed, believing that if they were to meet, he'd fall hopelessly in love with her because he's the only person in the world that could ever possibly begin to understand her as a person. Jody's almost positive that she'll get her chance at the concert, she just has to get him to notice her in the crowd. They'll make eye contact, stars will align, and he'll be hers forever because they're soul mates.

Well, that's not exactly how things worked out. As we all know, real life has a way of taking your dreams and tossing it to the wind sometimes. Jody makes it to the concert, but it's only after waiting in a queue all day, getting thrown up on by a drunk guy, racing to the front of the mosh pit and getting squeezed to death by the rambunctious crowd, and pummeled by security that she finally gets her moment with Jackson and it doesn't last long at all.

In a crazy tangle of events, Jody ends up kidnapping Jackson, but he's nothing like the guy that she had built him up to be in her head. In actuality, he's a desperate junkie and an incredibly rude jerkface who ends up clinging to Jody because he wants away from the spotlight, his suffocating manager, and his life as a rockstar. However, with the whole world missing their favorite frontman, how long can she keep him hidden in her grandpa's old garage while he detoxes?

My Opinion: Man, when I read the blurb for this book on Goodreads and saw the cover, I was desperate to get my hands on it. Luckily for me, Jen from Jenuine Cupcakes: The "Pusher" of Books & Cupcakes , allowed me to borrow the ARC she received from Scholastic and I was over-the-moon excited about it. Sadly, though it was a relatively good novel, this book turned out to be nothing that I thought it was going to be. I suppose I had imagined it to be this tale of a struggling rockstar battling with his inner demons and the outlandish string of events that lead to this girl kidnapping him and when they fell in love, she'd help him see the good in the world again. Well, in a way, that was almost the story I got, but the love was more of a brotherly-sisterly bond and the journey to his recovery was one hell of an uphill battle. Even if I was able to suspend belief and realize this was a work of fiction, some aspects of the story were so out there that I found it rather challenging to connect with the story and the characters, particularly Jody and Jackson.

I did appreciate the focus of how we generally place people, especially celebrities, on pedestals and how we forget that at the end of the day, they're human just like the rest of us. Furthermore, the idea that we can become so infatuated with someone that we fail to see that we have the best potential love right in front of us. Luckily, Jody wised up to Mac before it was too late and their declaration at the end gave me all the warm and fuzzy feelings. Mackenzie and Cree were the best things about this story!