"Beautifully-written and addictively juicy, this dazzling debut shines a spotlight on the coming-of-age of a female pop artist through the 90s."
Astute, addictive, lemon-sharp and steamy, Isabel Banta’s Honey debut explores a young woman’s navigation of celebrity, sex, relationships and identity through the late 90s and early 2000s. Part coming-of-age novel, part exposé of sexism and double-standards in the music industry and media, it’s devilishly compulsive, and clever with it.
“I feel like a fruit swinging from a tree. Plump and flush with color. Waiting to be picked”. So remarks Amber early on in the novel (and her career) in a line that encapsulates the quality of Banta’s writing — Amber’s voice is utterly compelling, and spiked with rapier-sharp observations of her world, and herself.
In 1997 Amber gets the call she’s been waiting for — the chance to join new girl band Cloud9. In time, Amber embarks on a solo career, like her former bandmate, Gwen, whose “friendship was my skeleton — it held me up”.
But fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — Amber’s left feeling as if she’s been “abridged to just my body”, not least in the aftermath of a liaison with a guy from a famous boy band. While he comes through the gossip unscathed, she’s seen as a slut and seductress: “I’m a late-night punchline and will be for years. I’m a tabloid tossed over chicken cutlets and eggs in a shopping basket”.
In time though, Amber starts to find her true voice and a sense of agency, though the novel is never sentimental. Rather, Honey feels 100% authentic from start to finish. There’s sex (lots of it), and an exhilarating sense of a young woman learning to navigate her life and career on her own terms.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
I didn't like to perform. I liked to be loved.
It is 1997, and Amber Young has received a life-changing call. It's a chance thousands of girls would die for: the opportunity to join girl group Cloud9 in Los Angeles and escape her small town. She quickly finds herself in the orbits of fellow rising stars Gwen Morris, a driven singer-dancer, and Wes Kingston, a member of the biggest boy band in the world, ETA.
As Amber embarks on her solo career and her fame intensifies, she increasingly finds herself reduced to a body, a voice, an object. Surrounded by the wrong kind of people and driven by a desire for recognition and success, for love and sex, for agency and connection, Amber comes of age at a time when the kaleidoscope of public opinion can distort everything, and one mistake can shatter a career.
Inspired by the starlets of the 90s and noughties who became as infamous for their personal lives as their hypersexualised music videos and lyrics, Honey is a novel about the journey from girlhood to womanhood and how far we are willing to go in the pursuit of love . . .
Honey features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Debuts, Popular music, Modern and Contemporary romance, Feminism and feminist theory, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations, Music: styles and genres, Music, The Arts, Romance / Relationship Stories, Gender studies: women and girls, Gender studies, gender groups, Social groups, communities and identities, Society and culture: general, Society and Social Sciences, Book Club Recommendations, Star Books
Honey is available in Paperback, Hardback
Honey was written by Isabel Banta and published by Zaffre an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
Honey has 384 pages
£15.29
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