Book Review: "Backstage Pass"

Backstage Pass by Gaby Triana is an intimate, albeit fictional, portrait of the lives of rockstar children. Not a troubled, strung out, rebellious child in sight - such is the reputation that so many of them wrongfully have - but the well-adjusted teenager who longs for nothing more than a stable home in any one given place, who yearns for life beyond tour buses and concert venues. From my own mild brushes with fame (and the offspring of said stars), I can pretty safely say this book is actually more or less the true reality of what it's like to be the child of a rockstar. Nowhere near as dramatic as the tabloids might like you to believe.

This is the story of Desert McGraw; daughter of fabled rock god Flesh: lead singer of Crossfire, and her quest for normality as an american teenager in Miami; wanting nothing more than the typical, everyday generic teen life - the highschool relationships, drama, the whole deal. She tries to maintain anonymity for as long as she can, but she unknowingly befriends a girl who seems to be her father's biggest fan, and starts to date a boy whose stepmother is a reporter for a tabloid. Naturally, her secret gets leaked fairly quickly, and it becomes more of the same mess she's had to deal with in every town she's lived in. On top of everything else, her father is collaborating with a modern young pop star - and failing miserably at it; her mother's personal assistant seems to be out to backstab the band; and her dad cheats on her mother. Desert has to deal with adversity in the best ways she can, while at the same time learning that she's not the center of the universe and that her friends have just as big, if not bigger problems than she does.

I really enjoyed this book thoroughly. Might be partly because of my lifelong obsession with rockstars and the business, but regardless, I loved this. Rating this one a 5 out of 5 stars!