Review: Groupies by Sarah Priscus

Groupies by Sarah Priscus

Publication date: July 12th, 2022

Pages: 368

Spice: 🌶️

Synopsis:

In a debut perfect for fans of Daisy Jones & The Six, Mary Jane, and The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, Sarah Priscus shines a bright light on the grungy yet glittery world of 1970s rock 'n' roll and the women--the groupies--who unapologetically love too much in a world that doesn't love them back.

It's 1977, and Faun Novak is in love with rock 'n' roll.

After her mother's death, Faun, a naive college dropout, grabs her Polaroid and hops a Greyhound to Los Angeles. In the City of Angels, she reconnects with her charismatic childhood friend Josie, now an up-and-coming model and muse. To make their reunion even sweeter, Josie is now dating Cal Holiday, the frontman of the superstar rock band Holiday Sun, and Faun is positively mesmerized.

Except it's not just the band she can't get enough of. It's also the proud groupies who support them in myriad ways. Among the groupies are: a doting high school girl at war with her mother; a drug-dealing wife and new mom who longs to be a star herself; and a cynical mover-and-shaker with a soft spot for Holiday Sun's bassist.

Faun obsessively photographs every aspect of this dazzling new world, struggling to balance her artistic ambitions with the band's expectations. As her confidence grows for the first time in her life, her priorities shift. She becomes reckless with friendship, romance, her ethics, and her bank account.

But just as everything is going great and her boring, old life is falling away, Faun realizes just how blind she has been to the darkest corners of this glamorous musical dreamland as the summer heats up and everything spirals out of control

Equal parts an evocative coming-of-age and a cutting look at fame, desire, and the media, Groupies is a novel that will have you turning the pages until the music and drug-fueled end.

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Story:

Within "Groupies" we follow the story of a character named Faun who has moved to Los Angeles to move in with her childhood best friend after her mother has died. Josie has engrained herself in the rock and roll world of the 1970s and is beloved by most if not all. We, the readers, follow Faun as she tries to navigate her new world. She tries to walk, talk, and love the way Josie and the rest of Holiday Sun's groupies while also coming to terms with who she really is and where her passion lies when the music stops. I think the premise of the story was very well done and made me curious. However, the characters and the author's lack of understanding of what that era was like left the story falling flat for me. It had a good foundation, but the execution did not follow through on its promise. It was a bold choice for the author to choose to make all the characters flawed and unbearably broken to the point none of them appealed to their audience. There were no protagonists in this story as even those meant for the role found themselves the antagonist for others or even themselves. 

Characters:

• Faun - I have never met a character that I have disliked as much as I disliked Faun. She was such a complete and utter pushover and follower that I had no idea why she was even the main character. If anything I would have wanted to see the world through Josie's eyes. Faun would put up with abuse on a near constant level. She was seen as the mousey friend of Josie's who made people feel seen through the lens of her camera and nothing more. To say that this book had any relationship with romance was laughable. Faun never connected with anyone and her open obsession with Josie had very strong underlying homosexuality vibes. I almost wish she had openly admitted to being attracted to Josie rather than becoming her borderline stalker. Faun had zero loyalty to anyone unless it suited her needs and I simply found her detestable.

• Josie - Josie felt complicated to me. She was bright and effervescent on the outside but there was definitely some damage lurking underneath. I wanted to see how complicated her relationship was with Cal. The story didn't delve too far into what was behind their issues that lead to the catalyst of her doing what she did in the end. I think the character had layers that the author didn't fully explore because she was too focused on needy, demanding, pouty Faun. I wasn't a huge fan of Josie's either, but at least she seemed to have a backbone and some sort of loyalty to speak of unlike her "best friend".  

• Kitty - Why is nobody willing to speak up for this child that is involved in a life of rock and roll and drugs? Faun clocks it and also feels uneasy about it but does nothing. Kitty shouldn't be with the band member she tied herself to and it was very clear why he was into her by the end of the book. This poor kid was so misguided and troubled. But she is another character I would love to see find herself.

• Yvonne - The bitch character that prides herself on feeling superior to everyone around her but she is just as fucked up as everyone else. I had ZERO love for Yvonne. She seemed like she just wanted to cause problems and slap people with digs that made her seem like she had more worth than the next person. Anytime she entered a scene I wanted to skip over the entire chapter to escape the eye rolls I can't help but display when reading her stance on things.

• Darlene - A drug dealing/addict new mother... do we really even need to say more? I hope not because there really isn't much more to her than that.

Writing:

There were moments when I felt like the writing waxed on poetically about the scene or Faun's internal dialogue to the point that I was falling asleep face first between the pages. The author tried to harness that 1970s dream-like state of the time but it was very clear that the author had zero experience in the era. Sometimes historical fiction is not as authentic if the person writing about it didn't have a span of their lives within that time frame. It was clear that the author did a lot of research into bands and the activities of some of them but the characters didn't feel real. They felt like paper thin representations of people that actually lived such experiences. I was intrigued by the world of the 1970s rock and roll lifestyle but I feel like this was not as good a demonstration of it as some others.

Overall:

I was hopeful for this book to be good. I wanted a front row seat to what it was like to live alongside some of the greats of rock and roll and what that life looked like. I wanted to see the grit and depravity. I wanted to see the philosophic thoughts of great minds or at least the destruction of them through the heightened times of drug and alcohol use. I was not expecting the murder and mayhem but it would have been a welcome addiction of the execution had been better, if even one of the characters had been likeable, or if the band that was featured was one actually recognized to the readers. I was curious enough to consume this book quickly but it lacked all the assets that would have made me more apt to attach the title of "great read".