Rockoholic - Review

Rockoholic

By: C.J. Skuse

Published: November 1st 2012 by Scholastic (first published March 7th 2011)

358 pages

Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)

( Goodreads | Amazon )

Goodreads description--She's got it bad, and he ain't good -- he's in her garage?

"I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me..."

Gonna have to face it: Jody's addicted to Jackson Gatlin, frontman of The Regulators, and after her best bud Mac scores tickets, she's front and center at his sold-out concert. But when she gets mashed in the moshpit and bodysurfs backstage, she's got more than a mild concussion to deal with. By the next morning, the strung-out rock star is coming down in her garage. Jody -- oops -- kind of kidnapped him. By accident. With a Curly Wurly candy bar. And now he doesn't want to leave.

It's a rock-star abduction worthy of an MTV reality series...but who got punk'd?!

I think all of us book fans can relate to having a celebrity crush. Most of us had them growing up (JTT anyone? Brian Littrell, Nick Carter...I could keep going). These days, my celebrity crushes tend to be fictional characters, but tə-mah-toh/tə-may-toh. So this book sounded really fun to me. Of course, kidnapping a celebrity no matter how doped up they might be is not entirely realistic. But who reads books all of them time for realism? Sometimes it’s nice to ask “what if” and Rockoholic was a fun way to go back to my childhood and imagine what would have happened if I had ever kidnapped my celebrity crush. (Too bad you can't kidnap fictional characters, huh?)

Jody reminded me a lot of myself when I was younger in her enthusiasm. I wasn’t quite as obsessed and had a greater grip on reality that I’d probably never even meet a celebrity much less bring one home with me. Though I won’t deny writing a few love letters I never sent. *blushes* But Jody’s had it a bit rough. Her parents have gotten divorced and her grandfather recently passed away, and the music of her rock star hero gives her hope and in some small way eases her pain.

However, Jody happens to be blessed with an extremely loveable and tolerant best friend, Mac. I wasn’t sure what to think about Mac at first and was afraid that he was quickly amounting to a cliché, but he turned out to be more than meets the eye and a character that I could really get behind and support. Mac not only puts up with Jody’s complete craziness, but he helps her along the way, he grounds her. He's a great character for this book.

Of course, Jackson, Jody’s rock star hero, doesn’t live up to what she’s always dreamed him to be. The author addresses the fact that fantasy is almost always better than reality and that our heroes almost never measure up to the pedestal we’ve placed them on, and the same is true for Jackson. He’s just a guy who’s in too deep—a guy who started out doing something he loved until that thing got morphed into something that he could no longer recognize. And like so many celebrities, he got sucked into trying to cope with all of that by turning to drugs. Even though the author did a good job of steering your emotional connection away from him as far as Jody's concerned, I felt so sorry for him.

I really think this story was about accepting reality, changing your circumstance, growing up, seeing what’s right in front of you, and learning that fantasy will always be just that, but despite how awesome you can make your fantasies, sometimes reality is so much better--because it's real.

I didn’t actually read any reviews of Rockoholic before reading this book, but I did notice that it’s got an overall 3 star rating on Goodreads and this kind of surprises me. Unrealistic as it may be, Rockoholic easily gets 4 stars from me. I read it in two days and even though I wasn't biting my nails the entire time (I don’t do that anyway), I was eager to see how it would turn out.

Have you read Rockoholic? If so, what did you think? Let me know!