celineong 's review for:

Kiss & Tell by Adib Khorram

4.0

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“it’s easy to focus on how messy and imperfect people are, but the next generation is already making their voices heard…and that’s just the loud ones. there are the quiet ones too, who are making powerful statements just by living, just by existing, just by surviving in this system that wants to tear them down. still they rise.”

✼ thank you to penguin random house for sending me an arc of kiss & tell in exchange for an honest review.

kiss & tell follows hunter, an openly gay boy band star as he and his best friends/bandmates embark on their first major north american tour. fresh off a painful and public breakup, hunter finds himself under immense scrutiny from all ends - their label who wants to shape hunter into a palatable queer person to boost sales, & the public who expect him to be the perfect queer role model.

stories about the cost of fame are my achilles heel. there’s something about it that makes my chest physically ache every single time.

this book has a lot to it. there’s the way privilege and marginalization overlap. there’s the heightened standards that queer folk are held to, especially those in the spotlight. how the industry picks you apart into digestible pieces, disregarding inconvenient parts of the narrative, molding it, reshaping you into something more acceptable.

there’s the relinquish of control that accompanies fame. who are you truly, when others treat you like a doll? when rules are set and you don’t even have a say in how you dress, let alone express yourself. the way everyone thinks they know you, but do you know you?

the mixed media format is executed so well here and its just. so zestful !! with short energetic chapters interspersed with social media posts, texts, gossip columns and emails (perfect for this adhd brain tbh!). it’s so immersive and you can’t help but get riled up and feel frustrated both for, and with, these kids.

it may be instinctive to compare this to the darius books, and while this has similarly quiet and vulnerable moments, its also very different. adib khorram’s range !! but throughout, adib excels at creating such wonderfully flawed and multi-faceted mcs, and i’m so very happy to read anything that he writes ever.