Yes, yes, yes. I finished this on Monday. But I would have finished it on Sunday if I hadn’t been watching the World Cup final and also reading Dimsie. It happens. Anyway, this is still relatively new (it came out mid-May) and as this peak summer holiday season (it’s the first week of the school holidays in a lot of places in the UK this week) this would also be a great book to read on your sunlounger.
So the plot: American Fantasy is a cruise ship, and for the duration of this cruise it’s going to be filled with fans of the 90s boyband Boy Talk, among them Annie. She was meant to be on the cruise with her sister, but after her sister broke her leg, she’s there alone. Annie is also newly divorced, newly empty nested and wondering what she’s doing on this cruise full of people who are clearly bigger fans than she is (or was). But with the help of her roommate, she starts to embrace the break from reality and the opportunity to re-examine her life as she takes a break on the sea. Also on board are said boyband, and when Annie accidentally connects with one of the members, it seems like there might be a whole new world out there .
I was expecting from the blurb that this could be a bit of a Romantic Comedy situation, but it keeps you guessing a bit more than that. We’re following the cruise from three points of view – Annie’s but also Sarah who works for the production company in charge of the boyband side of the cruise and Keith one of the members of the boyband. All the action takes place across the cruise and I’ve seen a lot of people saying that there isn’t a lot of plot or action. I’d disagree with that a bit – but I’d agree that a lot of what happens is internal to the characters. Annie’s situation I’ve already mentioned, but Sarah has just been dumped by her girlfriend and Keith is stuck in a bit of a rut in his life. Annie and Keith are doing the most reflecting on their lives, but Sarah is doing some too – along with providing the reader with a slightly different view point of the cruise and its attendees.
I’m a bit younger than Annie but I was a boyband teenager and so I really enjoyed reading about a fandom that’s been with a band for decades and is willing to shell out thousands of pounds/dollars to spend some time in proximity to them. I’m not that person – and Annie wouldn’t have been if her sister hadn’t wanted her to go, so I really felt this description of Annie as she waits to have her photo taken with the band:
Annie felt her heart rate increase. She wasn’t sweating anymore, she wasn’t hot, she wasn’t excited, exactly. It was the clickclickclick of a wooden roller coaster climbing to its first drop. Dread. It was one thing to be here—to admit to herself that this one group of men still mattered to her for whatever combination of reasons. Still, it was something else to actually meet them. Annie was comfortable with Boy Talk existing as an idea, a sort of inner party trick, like knitting or knowing something by heart. This was what she had known by heart for so many years, and hearts were meant to be kept inside.
Straub has talked about being a fan of New Kid on the Block and going on an NKotB cruise in the publicity tour for this book but contours of Boy Talk’s back story – one member of the band leaving and doing other things/becoming the break out success – is actually more similar to other bands – primarily N*Sync and Justin in the US but also Boyzone and Ronan, Take That and Robbie in the UK. I really enjoyed that Straub isn’t mocking the women for their fandom she’s leaning into it. There is some crazy in here, but it’s not about them having something that they are fans of. And that’s nice because liking boybands is often one of those things that’s framed as a guilty pleasure – like reading romance novels, or going to events for things that you like. I’ve certainly felt that.
I don’t think this is my favourite Emma Straub and I think what she’s trying to leave the reader with is more open-ended than I’m ever going to prefer, but it was a lovely reading experience and I only wish I’d been reading it on a sun lounger at the beach and not on the sofa and the train.
This is going to be super easy to find in shops – I’ve already seen it in several not just the time I mentioned in this post where I’ve reused the photo of the UK cover above from. I like the US cover better, which is why I used it at the top of the post and I think it is more reflective of the tone and genre of the novel that this one, but I wanted you to know what you’re looking out for. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo and in audio. My version came from NetGalley, even if I didn’t get to it before publication.
Happy Reading!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 