"Kill the Boy Band"

“Kill the Boy Band”

Written by Goldy Moldavsky

Review written by Diana Iozzia

What a wild, wild ride. This teen thriller / comedy was an absolute romp. “Kill the Boy Band” allows its readers to live vicariously through Beatle Mania, One Direction pandemonium, and murder in a delicious fashion. In the vein of “Heathers”, “The Craft”, and “Jennifer’s Body”, we are absolutely treated to an exciting and superbly comedic tale.

The satirical voice is strong with this one. “Kill the Boy Band” follows four teen girls who are purely obsessed with a boy band, The Ruperts. The singers of the band are all appropriately named Rupert. Our story begins in the middle of the story in one of my favorite styles: in media res. In media res is a fun film and book technique that drops you right into the action, with flashbacks and exposition that allows readers to fill in the details. The girls have kidnapped a Rupert. We beg the answer of “Why?”

This book has a lot of fun twists and turns, with a very comedic cast of characters. Goldy Moldavsky creates likeable and certainly murderable characters that feel very real but also surreal. They throw strange pop culture references in, use terrible dialogue. I believe that this is the new “Heathers”. I personally really enjoyed this realization, while also listening to the audiobook reading of this story, narrated by the original Veronica in “Heathers: The Musical”: Barrett Wilbert Weed. She’s also playing Janice Ian in “Mean Girls: The Musical”, another teen comedy. Her narration was comedic and extremely entertaining, with the bad English accents and exaggerated dialogue.

I think that one should go into reading this book, realizing that this is not going to be the best book ever written. The pacing is a bit strange and a bit slow at times. The dialogue, at times, is funny but mostly just irritating. Although this book is satirical, it still includes all of the annoying teen tropes. I think adding murder into the mix made this book much more entertaining, than if it was just teen girls stalking hot boys. I would have really enjoyed this as a teen. I think if you go into this book too critically, the magic is lost. Enjoy it for what it is.