The Thunder Girls by Melanie Blake

2.5 Stars

First off, what a truly appalling name for a band - The Thunder Girls.  Really, this was the best you could come up with?  At first it didn't bother me but when the PR Team start with the Thunderbirds puns for promoting the band it started to make me twitch and that didn't improve as the book progressed.

Then we come to the publishing house hyperbole surrounding the novel:

Glamorous - Well, maybe a little bit of glamour is in the book but mainly in name checking designers and talking about the application of lip gloss.  Honestly, the amount of time spent mentioning one character or another applying lip gloss or running out of lip gloss or lending lip gloss is incredible.  No real glamour though.

Dramatic - There are some moments that could be described as dramatic and a couple even manage to live up to it.  Sadly, most of the supposed drama falls a bit flat.

Sensational - It reads like a British Sunday Tabloid that is now defunct so there is a lot of sensationalism in the book but that is very different to being sensational.  It is just a bunch of tropes and the usual rumours surrounding anyone with a modicum of fame blended together.

Blockbuster - Well it is certainly that, only because of serious hype building by the real life PR team.  The blurb is cleverly written to draw you in but please don't expect too much of this book, it is not what it's glossy surface purports it to be.

There is a plot here but one that annoyed me as each member of The Thunder Girls (gag) is painted as a victim throughout the book.  Each and every revelation about what happened after the band split up only serves to denigrate the character further on the page.  I am sure that the author intended us to see the adversity in these women's lives and watch them reclaim their rightful place in the world as empowering.  It simply doesn't work, probably because each character is a cliche:

Chrissie - The true Diva of the group - selfish, self-centred and concerned only with image. 

Roxanne - The business woman of the group - her business is failing now but she hopes the reunion will give it a big enough boost to get her back in the black.  Fancies herself as an entrepreneur but really she is just riding the coat tails of her fame.

Carly - The quiet one, stuck in a borderline abusive marriage to another ex-famous person (this time a snooker player) she uses the opportunity to get away from him.  That really is all she does.

Anita - The wild and crazy one, went down the whole drug and alcohol route and then disappeared to Brazil where she married a woman and ran a bar.  Now they are back together, oh no, will she become wild and crazy once more?

Almost every early 1990's girl group cliche is covered - we just needed someone really interested in football to make the set of five.  Although they were supposed to have their heyday in the 1980s, it really all felt much more 1990s to me.

I just couldn't take anything about this book seriously.  From stumbling dialogue to a plot that drags along until you get to a set piece it just didn't do it for me.  Definitely more style than substance.