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Unabridged Digital Audiobook
Runtime: 6 hours, 54 minutes
Read by Barrett Wilbert Weed
From The Beatles to New Kids on the Block to One Direction…it seems that every generation has its own boy band obsession. But in the audio edition of author Goldy Moldavsky’s Kill the Boy Band, a quartet of obsessive teenage fans accidentally take their obsession to a whole new level.
The story follows a group of diehard boy band fangirls as a mission to meet up with their favorite musicians takes a dark turn. The four members of the British boy band The Ruperts are scheduled to appear in New York for a special Thanksgiving event. The 15-year-old narrator and her three best friends weren’t able to get tickets—so, instead, they get a room in the hotel where the boys always stay. And when one of the girls meets her favorite Rupert in the hall, her overexcited greeting turns into an unintentional kidnapping.
Kill the Boy Band is a darkly amusing adventure into superfandom and the boy band phenomenon. But it’s about more than just the mindless young fans who follow whichever boy band is in during their teen years. It’s a whole lot more menacing than that. The four main characters have both the desire and the means to do more than just sit around and fantasize about their favorite band member (though they do plenty of that, too). They have the connections that can put them in the right place at the right time and the rich (and naive) parents who make it possible to stay in the band’s favorite posh hotel. And some of them may also have deeper and more twisted motives.
Their story, then, quickly shifts from the excitement and anticipation of a fangirl quest to a surprising mystery, loaded with twists, suspicions, and revelations. It seems to get darker and more sinister with each new chapter. And while almost all of the characters tend to be conniving and self-absorbed in some pretty unlikable ways, they nevertheless make for an intriguing (and delightfully devious) story.
Probably the greatest problem with the audio version of this novel, however, is its narration. While actress Barrett Wilbert Weed handles the songs and the boys’ British accents with ease, her reading as the main character is flat and lifeless with random inflections—a frustrating mix of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart. While the monotone reading is most likely intentional—to make the main character sound like the typical teenager—it isn’t exactly enjoyable. Even when she’s talking about her passion for The Ruperts, her tone dull and dreary—and it’s enough to make readers either nod off while listening or give up on listening altogether.
While the narration doesn’t make for an easy listen, though, the story itself is dark and entertaining. Whether you once loved your very own boy bander or you look down on those who do, you’ll enjoy the twists and turns and pitch-black adventures of Kill the Boy Band.
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