LoveReading Says
Exploring the cost of fame, friendship, and first love, This Song is About Us is at once romantic and shot-through with reality as a young woman summons the courage to do what’s right in the face of fame and the cut-throat music industry.
The stage is set in summer 2023 when Drew is “one summer from superstardom” as his band, The Kerbs, play in front of a 12,000-strong audience, on the cusp of something special. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Ruby, the focus of this story, is “queen of The Kerbs’ socials”, but not for much longer as a professional team step in to manage every aspect of the musicians’ lives, including their relationships. Which is why Ruby and Drew come to be confronted with a life-changing decision — to either go public when Drew hits the big-time, or else keep their relationship a closely guarded secret, subject to the conditions of an NDA. When it comes to fame, Ruby is more clued up than vulnerable Drew. “You can’t put it back in the bottle”, she points out, so they agree to hide their relationship while Drew gets stuck into band life and Ruby finishes school.
A year later, when The Kerbs play to 100k adoring fans at the Reading Festival, an explosive performance shows how far the band has come along the fame road, and where the road is taking Drew, and it’s not a good place. Skip forward another year, and The Kerbs have an audience of 200k at Glastonbury, ahead of even bigger events taking place offstage.
Radiant with unexpected resolutions and the promise of new starts, This Song is About Us presents a gripping journey to maturity, with a strong sense of sisterhood, too.
Joanne Owen
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This Song Is About Us Synopsis
When stardom calls, can love survive?
Everyone wants a piece of the Drew Schafer, the talented and troubled lead singer of up-and-coming band The Kerbs. Only his girlfriend Ruby knows the real Drew - the gentle, vulnerable boy beneath the stardust. But no one else even knows that Ruby exists...
Told over three summer music festivals, this searing new novel from bestselling prize winner Sara Barnard charts the highs and heartbreaks of what it means for a dream to come true.
The Kerbs are a four-piece pop rock band on the verge of breaking big the moment that frontman, Drew, turns 18 at the end of the summer. But Drew and his long-term girlfriend Ruby have a decision to make: go public right from the start or keep their relationship private, away from the intrusive lens of the tabloids and the scrutiny of the Kerbs’ fanbase.
The choice seems easy. Ruby wants her life to remain her own – she's seen how fame can devour the lives of those who stand in the periphery.
But staying secret comes with a price. As Drew's star rises and rumours begin to stir, Ruby starts to wonder if love is strong enough to keep them together when Drew's fame seems destined to drive them apart.
This Song Is About Us is a compulsively readable YA mash-up of Daisy Jones & the Six and One Day for fans of Jandy Nelson and Holly Bourne.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781529525366 |
| Publication date: |
3rd April 2025 |
| Author: |
Sara Barnard |
| Publisher: |
Walker Books Ltd an imprint of Walker Books |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
328 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Young Adult Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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About Sara Barnard
Sara Barnard lives in Brighton and does all her best writing on trains. She is a bestselling author of seven novels for young adults. Her debut Beautiful Broken Things was a Zoella Bookclub pick and she went on to win the YA Book Prize with her third novel, Goodbye, Perfect. This Song Is About Us is her second novel with Walker Books. Sara believes that sad books are good for the soul, and happy books lift the heart. She hopes to write lots of books that do both.
More About Sara Barnard
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