As seen on The ReadventurerWhy isn't this book more popular? The only reason I know about it is because one day I was browsing my GR friends' shelves looking for a book written by an author whose name starts with "Q" for a reading challenge. How sad is that? Sorta Like a Rock Star deserves better.Amber Appleton is a peculiar sort of girl. If you have seen Happy-Go-Lucky, Amber is pretty much a younger version of Poppy, an incorrigible optimist. She is the life of the party, she stands up for the...

Sorta Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick is an awesome and inspiring read. I finished this book in a few short hours as Amber Appleton did such a great job captivating my attention with her unique and refreshing narrative. To be honest, I was a little skeptical of Quick’s ability to pull off penning a female character’s voice, but that just shows you what I know. The narrative and character development he achieved with this book was absolute perfection and had me applauding his efforts the whole

I'm sorry if this review is on the sucky side, I really want it to be good but I'm writing it at the same time as writing a 2000-word research report on quantitative data analysis (kill me, just kill me now) so I can't make any promises. Plus, it's one of those really good books that I tend to waffle about and write things that don't actually mean anything... perhaps it's destined to fail.Anyway! Let me just say that this book needs readers. About five hundred people have listed this book as

I’m almost ashamed how much I loved it because I GET life’s not like this. True? True. Good things don’t always come to good people, I (sorta) outgrew believing in all that karma crap years ago. Whatever, I finished this with a big smile on my face and a tingly feeling of hopefulness. Beating that pessimist back was hard work.It’s quintessential Quick, trying to think of another author who can pull off a story about poverty “I sleep on a school bus. I’m a freak” , addiction (raging alcoholic for...

“You may exist in This world—but I exist too. And I will not yield” Sorta Like A Rockstar is on my mind for months since I discovered it, until I decided to end my misery of repeating the title over and over again in my brain (because the title was really catchy imo) and read this book. And boy, WOW! this book rocked me totally. The first part kept me smiling and even laughing on how this book is filled of hope, joy, faith and anything that describes a positive life. Amber Appleton is an ador

Am I truly the only one on goodreads who was completely put off by this saccharine emotionally manipulative Pollyanna story with a heroine so very desperate to be quirkily likeable?Amber Appleton is supposed to be 17, but she reads like one of those 10-13-year-old heroines who (sniffle) have been through SO MUCH (sob) and yet somehow manage to maintain their relentless optimism despite all the failures of the adults in their lives to care for them. The kind of optimism that would certainly be na...

Irrepressible hope and relentless optimism are amazing and impressive...and you know what else? Extremely annoying. Yes, dear readers, I was one of those people giving Amber Appleton the side-eye for the entire first half of the book. Sure, I empathized with her horrible situation and admired the spunk in her survival skills but I still resisted the crap out of her charm. I found her hugging obsession creepy. Her “JC” name dropping made me itch. Her slang felt unnaturally shoehorned into her oth...

Amber Appleton is currently homeless, sleeping on the school bus her mother drives part-time, and trying to keep her life and her self together. She does the best she can with what she's got and makes the best out of her situation. She volunteers at the old folks home, she teaches english to Korean ladies at her church and she takes care of an autistic classmate in return for meals and shower privileges at his house. But Amber is barely holding it together, keeping herself and her pup, Bobby Big...

Giveaway Win!

All the stars!I love Matthew Quick's writing. His characters are not exactly realistic, but they are genuine, and make me feel. His characters are like a mish mash of seven real people with quirks, using mostly the odd parts, and then Quick adds these fascinating ways they speak. Inner dialogue, secret slang, old slang, made up phrases that just make sense, you name it. I LOVE the people he makes.This is technically one of his YA books, but it doesn't matter. This book is about people. And despa...

Hot on the heels of the excellent “Silver Linings Playbook” I jumped straight into Matthew Quick's next book, “Sorta Like a Rock Star” which is a Young Adult novel aimed at teens and is narrated in the first person by a teenage girl called Amber. This is a review of the first 10 pages of this novel - is that unfair? Yup! Is that stopping me from writing this review? Nope!Within the first few pages of this novel I regretted buying it. Matthew Quick is a 40 year-old man trying to mimic the voice o...

2.5ish stars. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book...On the one hand, it is somehow simultaneously extremely emotional and yet feel-good; it is well plotted; it made me both think and feel; it has a good message; and once I got to about half way through, I wanted to keep reading to find out what happened. On the other hand, it wasn’t until halfway through that I felt any desire to keep reading, as almost nothing happens in the first half. I didn’t find any of the characters particular...

This book had the most annoying narrator I've read in a long time. Every few sentences, she stops to say "True? True." I mean, what? Kids use slang, but that doesn't even make sense. We're reading your story, we assume you are telling the truth or if not, you'll let us know. Also, she kept throwing out stuff like "word!" or "sucka!" which just sounds stupid. The rest of her narration seems like she is intelligent and reads a lot, so these interjections just undermine all that. The story has an i...

It begins with a young woman whose perpetually upbeat manner had me squinting, wondering at what her damage was. Proclaimed Princess of Hope, she’d surrounded herself with people to hold up. Yet it was these various people who had me pausing, they seemed almost too sweet. The five she hung out with were odd ball misfits with no place but with each other. The old folks home and her verbal wars with Joan of old as well as the Singing Korean Divas and a haiku writing war vet… all touched me, but ju...

Another great story from Matthew (Silver Linings Playbook) who demonstrates that hope is what's possible and necessary in life. Amber Appleton is a teen who in spite of her mother's choices inspires everyone she interacts with regardless of age, sex or mindset. A member of a group of dysfunctional high school friends, her wit, passion and energy is contagious. Of the five members, Ricky, an autistic math wiz is her sidekick, his mother Donna, an attorney who supports Amber in ways unimaginable.

You know what? I'm giving this book 5 stars anyway. It's just that good. Amber Appleton is one of the most peculiar YA narrators I've ever come across. She is an extreme optimist, no matter what direction life takes her. When the story opens, life has taken her mother and her to live on the school bus her mom drives after being kicked out of her mom's ex-boyfriend Oliver's apartment. However, Amber soon suffers a tragedy so great that now even she can't see a bright side.I was afraid of giving

3.7 Out Of 5 "tragically hip" StarsAt first, Amber Appleton annoyed me quite a bit. She is tragically hip, saying words like True and Word constantly. Maybe, in 2015 when this was published, she might come off as less annoying, but somehow I doubt it. I was poised to give this something like a 2-2 and 12 Stars, and then somewhere along the way, she started to get to me. Somehow, she burrowed her way under my skin. I even shed a tear or two. Seriously. Of course, I could just be feeling sorry for...

Original post from One More PageI've been wanting to get a copy of Matthew Quick's Sorta Like A Rock Star for the longest time, because I thought it was one of those band books -- sorta kinda like Antony John's Five Flavors of Dumb -- and I enjoy those books a lot. But no one ever gave it to me for Christmas or my birthday, so after two years of it being in my wish list, I decided to splurge on it shortly after Christmas.As it turns out, though, Sorta Like A Rock Star is far from being

The writing for this book is abysmal, as though the writer tried to mesh together all the types of slang youth have used over the past 70 years (from cool cat to sucka to "True? True.") After the first 20 pages, I gave up and started skimming. The main character is super religious and refers regularly to JC and even after tragedy strikes her life remains (to me) an unsymapathetic narrator. Why? Because she's unrealistic. She doesn't sound like a teenager. She's doesn't have much depth. She's a s...