Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The boy band. Li amavo da morire

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

The boy band. Li amavo da morire by Goldy Moldavsky

6 reviews

cheye13's review against another edition

funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was a perfect book. For me. I cannot and do not widely recommend this. This is a very specific book for a very specific type of person.

First of all: the band in the book is not One Direction - but it's One Direction. This book is for people who were (are) intense One Direction fans during their hype, but on the older end (like fans 18 & up, rather than 13-16yos they were initially marketed to); fans who were just as crazy, but had a smidgen of self-awareness about it. Fans who read/wrote RPF but didn't genuinely believe any of the band was secretly dating each other. Fans who now look back on One Direction and think "they were (are) just regular dudes." A heavy and specifically boyband fanaticism with a sprinkling of realism. Probably also helpful if the reader's a queer woman (and managed to avoid that whole "i'm gonna marry [boybander]" phenomenon).

This book isn't written like a marketable, mainstream novel. It's written like a - very good - boyband fanfiction. I'm obsessed with it. This may be my favorite book of the year.

EDITED TO ADD: you know that Bob's Burgers episode where Louise wants to slap BooBoo? Take that, age it up, satirize it a little further, and pad out the plot to fill a novel. i.e. if you Understood™ Louise in that episode, you'll get this book.

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trulydevious's review against another edition

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dark funny reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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subjecta5's review against another edition

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dark funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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tachyondecay's review against another edition

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I put this book down at the start of Chapter 6, where one of the supposed protagonists (a 15-year-old girl) is sexually assaulting a kidnapped 15-year-old boy she idolizes. I don’t care why it’s happening or what justification there is—Kill the Boy Band had already tried my patience with some other red flags as well as Goldy Moldavsky’s style; I was already mulling over DNFing it despite being less than 50 pages in. As usual, Kara needs to learn to trust her gut.

This is supposedly a dark comedy about four 15-year-old American girls who are diehard fans of British boy band The Ruperts (because they are all named Rupert, get it?). These girls are so hardcore that they get a room at the same hotel where the Ruperts will be staying during their appearance in New York City. They end up inadvertently kidnapping one of the Ruperts, though, and holding him in their room, bound and gagged with tights. And that is all I know, because I didn’t even bother to look up how the book ends. I don’t care.

From the beginning of the book, I wasn’t happy with how Moldavsky was characterizing these girls. It felt like she was satirizing the idea of a boy band fangirl. I didn’t want to bring this up initially, because I wasn’t too sure where Moldavsky is coming from—but then I saw this answer from her on Goodreads where she basically admits that she herself hasn’t been a boy band fan girl, and this is all based on watching a documentary about boy bands.

So … yeah. So much of the humour in this book, at least the chapters I managed to read, feels like it is punching down, like Moldavsky is making fun of our protagonists. That’s a weird tone to take for a young adult novel. There’s also some fatphobia with Apple, one of the girls, who was adopted from an orphanage in Beijing (and therefore, presumably, Chinese). Similarly, Isabel is of Dominican descent, but she has patchier Spanish than our narrator and also apparently knows stuff about crime?? This exemplifies the poor attempts at diversity among our main characters. It’s not enough to just toss in a couple of different races if you aren’t thinking carefully about the stereotypes involved. Also, the character development itself is clunky—our narrator (who apparently, according to other reviews, just goes unnamed for the whole book??) just straight-up tells us Apple is an adopted Chinese orphan. Like, maybe save that for a moment where it’s relevant instead of giving us a “crit stats” rundown on each of your friends?

For all these reasons and more, I wasn’t too happy with Kill the Boy Band before we got to Chapter 6. And then, within the first paragraph, there’s the sexual assault. Yeah, it’s just straddling and licking his face—but that is happening while he’s bound and gagged and unable to consent. That makes it assault. And like so much already seen in this book, it isn’t treated with the severity that such an action deserves.

This is an unfortunate trend I see in books, both YA and adult, that try to blend comedy with darkness without verging full-on into horror. Yeah, the premise that a bunch of 15-year-old girls accidentally kidnap a member of their favourite band and maybe (?) end up accidentally killing him is dark. You can also make it funny. But making it sympathetic? So much more difficult. If you want an example of a YA novel that embraces the darkness and doesn’t look away, go read Hannah Capin’s Foul is Fair instead.

I just restocked on library books and owned books. Let’s move on.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

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geno's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I love it. It's fun, dark, real and everything in between.
It makes fun of the fangirls and the boybands in such a caring.

Four friends find themselves kidnapping a member from their favorite boyband. The whole story happens in a few hours and everything went from bad to worse. But is such a fun trip (specially if you are a fangirl): fake girlfriends, murder, social media used as a tool, reference to old movies, friendship put to the test. It sounds impossible but it all works out.

It's a weird trip, but a really nice one.

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radiocryptid's review against another edition

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fast-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Holy shit this is the worst book I've ever read and I've read shitty books in my time. Where to even begin wow there is so much hot garbage in this book: racism, sexism, homophobia, fatphobia not to mention just bad storytelling and weak characters. It's about four girls who "accidently" kidnap a member of the Boy Band "The Ruperts" who are all named Rupert. Okay this is going to be spoiler ridden, I mean I don't think you should read the book anyway, but spoiler warning ahead. Also C/W for sexual assault, murder, suicide mention, homophobia, slut-shaming and racism.

so it begins with our main girl Frances otherwise known as "Baby", first of all, what the actual fuck kind of nickname is that? Frances is your classic plain girl, wide-eyed, innocent, with extensive knowledge of 80s movies. By extensive knowledge I mean Ferris Bueller's Day Off and well, that's about it. Her dad died a couple of years ago and she wears a hand made friendship bracelet with "daddy" charms on it. Which is very fucking weird. She had no personality, no urge to do anything and she constantly talks about it, like she's self aware that she's really boring and doesn't fight to do anything and so complains about it. I don't understand this at ALL. There are three other girls in the group, all fans of the boy band The Ruperts. I'll get to The Ruperts later. I want to focus on one of the girls, her name is Apple, and she is fat and asian and a crybaby with no backbone, which is her entire fleshed out personality. She is the butt of all the jokes and has a stereotypical housemaid named Consuella, three guesses as to what her background is. Apple is a horrid fangirl who doesn't care about The Rupert's personal space or decent behaviour on the slightest. The story starts with her KNOCKING OUT Rupert P and TYING HIM UP IN HER HOTEL ROOM. She then proceeds to hump him, touch him, lick him, sit on his lap shirtless and take photos of him. It's so disturbing and disrespectful. She is a horrible person and the book is written for you to feel sorry for her because Rupert P calls her a "whale" at one point in the book. HE WAS FUCKING KIDNAPPED BY HER HE CAN CALL HER WHATEVER HE LIKES. Not to mention Apple's complete disrespect for Rupert P's sexuality. In fact, everyone is really horrible about it. Making fun of him for being secretive about it, over sexualising him. Not to mention the amount of times they made fun of him for having a gambling problem. Countless times, and I mean probably HUNDREDS of times throughout the book Rupert P is known as a dropkick, flop, day ruiner and general idiot. He is a huge celebrity and is doing his goddamn best to fit into a band he doesn't feel like he's talented enough to be in for fucks sake give him a break. Frances tries to free him at one point but the knots are too tight so she just,,,gives up???? what the fuck??? Why??? I don't understand what logic is behind this???? and then later on Rupert pulls free and he just,,,hangs around???? He doesn't run????? He just stands there to reveal some tiny plot point????? And then the girls tie him up again???????? what the fuck is going on??????????? I'm going to move on to the third girl in the group of rupert's fans; Erin. Erin is a basic bitch through and through. She's popular, skinny and blonde. So of course Frances feels like she isn't deserving of being her friend. Erin's backstory is that she used to be a Rupert's fan but at a show she went to once, snuck backstage and waited, NAKED, in one of the member's room to have sex with him. And she did have sex with him. They're the same age, but it's still fucked and although Erin should not have invaded their privacy like that, he shouldn't have agreed to have sex with her because of that kind of power dynamic. The band member (I think it's Rupert L) proceeds to take photos of Erin naked and send it to the other band members. This is fucked up and horrific, Erin did not deserve this and it is sexual abuse. When Erin tells this to Frances, who is supposedly her friend, Frances doesn't really care. She still loves the Ruperts and chooses them over her friend who was abused by them. Not to mention that Erin's actions do not depict someone who has gone through a traumatic event and it's actually very offensive to write her going through that and her then to think revenge is the way to go, when has a victim ever acted like that? Erin's abuse is written in a dramatised theatrical way with no research behind it and no empathy or kindness. Erin should have gotten the help she deserved, she should have gotten the time and space to tell her story but instead, it was bulldozed by Frances saying how much she loves the Ruperts. It's so fucked up .

I'm going to move on to the real turning point of the story, the point I thought would have made the book better. The girls return to the hotel room after roaming around for a bit to find Rupert P dead. I thought, finally yes the girls are going to be pushed to make some moral decisions and question their ethics, but instead, all they do is moan and whine. They dump Rupert P back into his penthouse hotel room with the other Rupert's, the girls have to hide in a cupboard as the other Ruperts just arrive back as well. And what do they do seeing their close friend and bandmate dead on a bean bag? Slut shame him and cry about how the band is going to break up now. Yup. I know. What in the actual fuck. The only Rupert that had any sense was Rupert K, who just happened to be Frances' favourite and also they kiss and have a little love story which is so fucked up on so many levels. You would think the story would end with the Rupert's calling the police and having a full on investigation but oh no instead Rupert X (side note, Barret Wilbert Weed, the person reading the audiobook, does not know how to pronounce Xavier and it is so frustrating) and Rupert K THROUGH RUPERT P OFF THE BUILDING TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A SUICIDE EVEN THOUGH HE WAS STRANGLED TO DEATH AND IT'S VERY OBVIOUS AND WOULD SHOW UP IN THE AUTOPSY LIKE WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK????? Okay but let's talk about who actually murdered Rupert P, because it wasn't any of the girls and it wasn't any of the Ruperts and it wasn't suicide. It was Rupert P's fake girlfriend who just HAPPENED to find the room the girls were staying in and just HAPPENED to swindled a key card out of the front desk and just HAPPENED to overhear the girls talking about Rupert P being tied up in their room so she snuck and in and quote en quote "killed him out of passion" by accident. What the actual fuck. Michelle, the fake girlfriend, was angry with Rupert P because he didn't book her a room in the hotel. BOOK IT YOURSELF LIKE WHAT THE FUCK HE ISN'T EVEN YOUR ACTUAL BOYFRIEND???? Want to hear the most fucked up part? She doesn't even go to jail in the end. You know who does? Rupert X and Rupert L, I mean they did throw a dead body off the top of the building which is incredibly fucked, but they didn't KILL him??? And the girls, they got off scot-free as well. And um what kind of police investigation was there??? Has no one ever heard of security cameras?? That would have shown the girls move the body everywhere? That would have shown Michelle go into the girls' room at the time of death? That would have shown absolutely everything??? There is no logic to anything that happens in the book. It's blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic, slut-shaming, suicide-joking mess of a book. There was so many opportunities to make this book great. Why couldn't the girls band together when they find the dead body? Why can't we see them trying to transport the body where there was no camera's? Through the vents or something? Why can't we see the girls make up and realise that the boy band is awful and that Rupert P didn't deserve to die? Why can't we see some justice for Michelle?

This book is disgusting, disturbing, poorly written and offensive.

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