What was it like being a female singer growing up in the spotlight during the ‘90s?
Meet Amber Young, a rising pop star who has just received a life-changing phone call. She’s been offered a chance that thousands of girls desire: the opportunity to join the girl group Cloud9 in Los Angeles. Amber quickly finds herself performing alongside singer-dancer Gwen Morris and Wes Kingston, a member of ETA, the biggest boy band in the world. Together, they epitomise the American teen dream filled with MTV fame and success. Amber considers Gwen the first friend who can truly understand her and their shared experience as rising stars.
Soon Amber embarks on a solo career and her fame intensifies. However, she also increasingly finds herself reduced to a body, voice and marketable product. Amber is marketed as overtly sexual, with hit records and videos paving her way. Despite her success, she’s constantly compared unfavourably to her peers who boast a girl next door image.
When Amber is selected as the opening act to tour with ETA, she develops an infatuation that threatens her friendship and career.
Amber begins to understand the highs and lows of fame while grappling with her desires, sense of agency and identity. Meanwhile, she is coming of age during the peak of the paparazzi, at a time when public opinion is distorted by the media and one mistake can shatter a career.
“It happens at once, a flood of humiliation. I’m a late-night punch line. I’m a tabloid tossed over chicken cutlets and eggs in a shopping cart. A crude angle of my body. A frame on a balcony with someone I love.”
Isabel’s portrayal of Amber’s rise to fame is inspired by the era’s iconic pop stars who became as famous for their personal lives as their hypersexualised music videos and lyrics. Honey’s characterisation is so vivid it could well be a memoir! Interviews, song lyrics and CD liner notes add an extra dimension.
Isabel expertly blends the allure and pitfalls of celebrity culture, bringing the world of the ‘90s pop stars to life. Relatable and eye-opening, she also explores the objectification of women and the contradictory standards of the music industry. Through Amber’s story, Isabel examines the power dynamics that often exclude women, highlighting their challenges. Her story also resonates with the themes in Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me and other memoirs from this era. However, the struggles Amber faces in an industry that persistently tries to control her is a universal experience for many women in the spotlight.
Isabel’s debut novel Honey is a story of the journey from girlhood to womanhood and how far we are willing to go in the pursuit of love. Isabel Banta is based in Brooklyn, New York and this is her first novel. She dedicates the novel to all the pop stars she had posters of on her bedroom wall! Follow Isabel Banta online.
Reviewer: Andrea Molloy
Publisher: Bonnier