I think I’m falling out with fluffy books because this didn’t do anything for me at all. If I had read this when I was younger, I would have thought it cute and romantic, but I’m reading this at my age and thinking “Well, this is every single RPF popfic that I had to slog through to get to some good stuff.” Of course, Casey’s favorite band member is cute and sensitive (he reads poetry and buys antique books!) and the lead female singer is a bitch and ugh.

And I’m sorry, Casey is a spoiled brat. I was stunned that she managed to have her dream summer without any consequence from her family. She’s self-centered, she never once worries about what her family must be going through, and when she comes back, Casey just gets to go to Columbia with her parents footing the bill and paying for anything. If I were in her shoes, I’d be working my ass off every single break afterward. Yes, her parents are strict, but I can’t sympathize with Casey at all.

The plot is boring, but seeing as Casey spends most of the time on the tour bus with the band, I gave that a bit of a pass because well, I’m pretty sure that tour buses are boring. But there really wasn’t much to Casey and the rest of the band. We don’t even get a sense of how far Casey is out of her element. And there’s three things that really bothered me:

1. My problem with a lot of music books like this is that it’s so focused on the celebrity aspect and not the music. Even if the main character isn’t a musician of some sort, you can still get a feel for what the music’s like if the book conveys it well. In this, Moving Neutral just feels like any other band who happens to have a big hit. I don’t know what kind of music they write, they play, and it really brought the book down to me.

2. The shocking revelation that Casey is a better singer than April because Casey scored a perfect on a Rock Band song. This is coming from someone who knows shit about vocal theory, and I cried major bullshit. Rock Band vocals are based on how the singer matches the original pitch of the song. If April’s a professional singer (but oh no, of course she’s not), then she would have a different pitch and range than the song requires. It’s also mentioned that the song Casey scores a perfect on is a song she’s extremely familiar with, so I’m not surprised she would get a higher score. It’s like saying I’m a great dancer because I can score 100% on certain DDR songs.

3. This is more of nitpick than a problem, but it still pissed me off: It’s mentioned that one of the band members is Elvis Costello’s grandson. It’s plausible, but my believability meter can only stretch so far.

It’s not horribly written, but the lack of sympathetic character and the trite plot twists were simply uninteresting. There are better music books out there.
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