Breakup Badness

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway
Reviewed by Ruya

A breakup, in any situation, is a stressful affair. Especially if the person you broke up with writes a song about it. And then that song becomes an instant hit. And quickly ascends the top 10 list of most popular songs to play on the radio. And just to add oil to the flames, because of that song you become a celebrity. Fortunately for most of us, this chain of events is unlikely to just about impossible. But it's what happens to Audrey, the heroine of Audrey, Wait!, and that one song pretty much messes up her entire life. One minute all she's worrying about is what to wear to the concert she's going to with her best friend, and hoping that the cute guy at the ice cream shop she works at will actually talk to her, and the next, she has her own fan site and her face is plastered across the pages of popular teen magazines. Add on the reporters trying to make her out to be the new Paris Hilton, and Audrey's soon wishing she had never broken up with her ex in the first place.

This book comes highly recommended by well-known YA writers such as Meg Cabot and Rachel Cohn, not to mention many ecstatic readers. Despite that, I found it to be cute and entertaining at best, mediocre and clichéd at worst. 'The downside of fame' as a theme is way too overdone to be interesting anymore. The characters are well done, though none but Audrey (whose hobbies include listening to deafeningly loud music in the middle of the night while adding to the collage that takes up half of her wall) are really memorable. The writing is good, but nothing to write home about. The two high points were the song quotes that began each chapter and the quick dialog between Audrey and her best friend, Victoria. To all you readers out there aged 12 and up, I say read this book if you want, because it really is a fun book, but don't expect too much from it.