Book Review: Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway

Title: Audrey, Wait!

Author: Robin Benway

Publisher: Razorbill

Pages: 329

Format: Paperback

Published: April, 2009

Price: Rp127.000 (Periplus)

Rating: 4 / 5 stars

Date started: July 5, 2015 - Date finished: July 8, 2015

Synopsis:

The wait is over for the paperback of this irresistible, fast-paced, hit-worthy debut! When funny, charming, absolutely-normal Audrey Cuttler dumps her boyfriend Evan, he writes a song about her that becomes a number-one hit?and rockets Audrey to stardom!

Suddenly, tabloid paparazzi are on her tail and Audrey can barely hang with her friends at concerts or the movies without getting mobbed?let alone score a date with James, her adorable coworker at the Scooper Dooper. Her life will never be the same?at least, not until Audrey confronts Evan live on MTV and lets the world know exactly who she is!

Review:

Sixteen-year-old Audrey just wants to be a normal teenager. She wants to watch concerts as much as she wants, listens to music way too loud, and do anything normal teenagers do. For a while, she was able to do just that. But it all changed when she decided to broke up with her self-centered boyfriend, Evan who happens to be a singer in a band called The Do-Gooders.

To her surprise, after they broke up Evan made a song inspired by the break-up. The song is titled "Audrey, Wait!" and astonishingly people enjoyed it and throughout time it became a hit song to a degree that it became "The Song." After that, life can never be normal again for Audrey, she became an instant sensation. It was fun at first cause she would backstage passes and VIP passes to some concerts but when she found out that it was done so that she would spend time with the bands to get "inspired" for a song, it happened with Simon from The Lolitas.

Day after day the song became more and more popular along with Audrey's popularity until it is known nationwide and became No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart her popularity skyrocketed. The attention surrounding Audrey was overwhelming her, she felt suffocated, restrained because she can't go anywhere anymore without the paparazzi snapping up pictures of her. It is safe to say she has no personal life anymore.

“If you really want to know something about me, you should know this: I like my music loud. I mean loud. I'm not talking about the kind of loud where your parents knock on your bedroom door and ask you to turn it down. Please. That's amateur hour. When I say loud, I mean you-can't-hear-your-parents-knocking-and-the-neighbors-are-putting-a-FOR-SALE-sign-on-their-house-and-moving-to-another-block-because-they-can't-handle-the-constant-noise-anymore loud. You have to turn it up so that your chest shakes and the drums get in between your ribs like a heartbeat and the bass goes up your spine and frizzles your brain and all you can do is dance or spin in a circle or just scream along because you know that however this music makes you feel, it's exactly right. If you are not this kind of person, then I don't think we'll be great friends.”

Audrey, Wait! is a breath of fresh air for me. I really liked my experience reading this book. I enjoyed being Audrey in its first person point-of-view but what I liked the most was Audrey's sarcasm that was totally spot on.

I also liked how this story is not a full on romance story like most contemporary novels are. This book kind of mainly deals with how a teenage girl handled being in the spotlight, about how being young is all about making mistakes and learning from your mistakes, and of course there are bits and pieces of romance throughout the book but it wasn't the main focus in this book.

There are many characters that I liked from this book. In fact I really liked them all except for Sharon Eggleston (who is for me supposed to be a bitch but in fact she's not bitchy enough). The character that I really liked the most was the main character herself because she's witty, humorous, and sassy. In addition who wouldn't love Bendomolena, which I imagined to be the fattest cat alive from the description in the book. Even though I'm not particularly fond of cat my mom and my sister would've loved to have Bendomolena as a pet.

My favorite scenes are probably scenes that involve dialogues between Audrey and Victoria (the best friend). Because if there's one thing that should be praised from this book is this book's dialogues between its characters, it didn't seem forced it was almost like ourselves talking with other people. The dialogues seemed real. I think Robin Benway could be my new favorite authors if all of her other books contain this kind of natural dialogues. She's totally right up my alley.

To sum it up, if you're a contemporary fan looking for a book that doesn't really focus on the romance aspect then this book might be worth your while.

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