The Straight Road to Kylie

Jonathan is living the good life.  He's out and proud with three of the best girlfriends and having a fine time.  But during a drunken night, he accidentally has sex with a girl and now everyone is after him for something and wondering if he is actually straight.  When one of the popular girls in school offers him a bargain: act like her boyfriend and she'll take him to see his favorite pop star, Kylie Minogue.  But the straight road to Kylie leads to much drama.

Favorite quote: "She's even turning her back on me via Chick-fil-A! I'm gonna de-friend her on MySpace."  Carrie and Juan gasped.


I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into before I picked up this book.  The description sounded fun.  And this was, hands-down, a fun book.  It was very pink and frilly and frantic.  It was also just a tad too long.  I really felt sorry for Jonathan.  He just starts digging a hole after he sleeps with this girl and just digs and digs and digs.  And every time he tries to get out, he falls right back in.  All he wants to do is go see Kylie Minogue, his pop hero, but he makes a deal with the devil and drags all his friends along with him.  I saw a couple of his problems coming before he did with a couple of his friends.  Also he yells a lot.  I knew that is strange, but he was yelling or screaming on like every page.  I don't think the author knew how to convey excitement without making someone yell.  So that was weird.

Jonathan's friends were pretty awesome too and very well defined.  I've had friends like these in the my life especially the Carrie character.  They were well written and the drama was so very high school.  I will mention that there is a lot of cursing, sex (nothing explicit though), talk about sex, drinking and drugs.  Normally I don't mention stuff like that, but I feel like I have to on this one.  It's not quite adult, but it's a little more than YA.  I would say about on par with the Gossip Girl series.  So if you don't want your kid reading those, then this isn't going to work for them either.

Something that wasn't really touched on or said explicitly, but I think Jonathan had to use his "straight" self to figure out his gay self.  He knew he was gay, but had never kissed a boy or dated one really.  So in the course of pretending to be straight, he found what he was looking for, the life he was looking for as a gay male.  I don't really recommend this route, but it made for an good book.