Publication Date: May 2nd, 2017
Publisher: Amulet Books
“A cappella just got a makeover.
Jordan Sun is embarking on her junior year at the Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts, hopeful that this will be her time: the year she finally gets cast in the school musical. But when her low Alto 2 voice gets her shut out for the third straight year—threatening her future at Kensington-Blaine and jeopardizing her college applications—she’s forced to consider nontraditional options.
In Jordan’s case, really nontraditional. A spot has opened up in the Sharpshooters, Kensington’s elite a cappella octet. Worshipped…revered…all male. Desperate to prove herself, Jordan auditions in her most convincing drag, and it turns out that Jordan Sun, Tenor 1, is exactly what the Sharps are looking for.
Jordan finds herself enmeshed in a precarious juggling act: making friends, alienating friends, crushing on a guy, crushing on a girl, and navigating decades-old rivalries. With her secret growing heavier every day, Jordan pushes beyond gender norms to confront what it means to be a girl (and a guy) in a male-dominated society, and—most importantly—what it means to be herself.”
Review:
I’m so happy I loved this book as much as I did since it was my 80th book this year and therefore, the end of my Goodreads Reading Challenge for the year! (Of course I’ll continue to read, but yay!). Jordan is a girl who is at a boarding school for performing arts who is struggling to receive parts in the musical for the last three years. Her mom doesn’t want her to be there if she can’t get cast in the musicals. When a spot in the boarding school’s most elite acappella group opens up, she does what she has to in order to get a spot. She dresses up as a boy and it turns out that Jordan, now as Julian, is exactly what the group was looking for. She goes through all of the measures to make sure that this works out. Of course, there are bumps along the way.
Okay but this book was amazing. There were so many great things! This was like Mulan (which is one my favorites) mixed with Glee (another one of my favorites) so it was just amazing to read. Jordan is one of my favorite characters in a book ever. The lengths that she goes through to make sure that she won’t get caught is unfathomable. She is so strong for dealing with so many things on her plate, but she doesn’t let it get to her.
Next, I love the different romances in this book. There were so many and it was awesome to see the straight, bisexual, and gay couples being so well loved. Riley Redgate really wrote these parts wonderfully.
The only thing that I thought could’ve been better were some of the characters. I understand that there are some people who are meant to be background characters and main characters. However, a lot of them were main and then background again, so there were some confusing parts that I had to reread. Other than this, I loved this book a lot. The writing style and story were something that I never really heard of so I was captivated from the start.
Rating: 4.5/5
