I read If This Gets Out and here's what I thought

 

Well, apparently, I’m two for two now on dual-POV books written by two authors. It was Here’s to Us last post, and now we’re onto If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich. So, I’ve read Cale Dietrich’s other books, I believe he only has two, and I’ve read one of Sophie Gonzales’, but I don’t remember what happened in it. I know I liked it enough to keep it on my shelf, but I don’t remember what happened in it. Either way, like I mentioned above, today I’m talking about If This Gets Out.

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Our “Hey, Miss Blurb” tells us that Ruben and Zach are two members of Saturday, one of the world’s biggest boybands. They’re teen heartthrobs on camera and besties off. However, their management is pressuring Ruben to stay in the closet, and that pressure is taking its toll and Zach is the only one he can confide in. The two come to rely on each other more and more during a European tour, and friendship evolves into romance. And then if this gets out, will their fans give them the support they need, and how can they hold onto each other if the world is coming apart?

So, immediately, it’s giving high stakes, they’re in the spotlight, they’ve already got that pressure on them, so there’s pressure for conflict there. There’s also 400 pages of the book, so there’s certainly space for conflict. That’s not a knock on the book by any means, it’s a knock on how lazy I am. It’s like that Tumblr post that’s like, “I love when movies are 80 minutes long, like, yes bitch, get to the point!”

We open the book on Saturday finishing their final show of their US tour in Orlando, and poor Ruben nearly falls off stage, and he gets saved by Zach. And it gets mentioned that their management essentially assigned their personalities to them, and they are the personalities that are portrayed to the public. For the members: Zach is the bad boy, Angel is the fun, innocent goof, Jon is the charismatic womaniser, and Ruben is basically the inoffensive one with a pretty face. Lovely. And even if the blurb hadn’t told us that a romance happens between Ruben and Zach, it’s obvious from the go that Ruben is into Zach. Like, homeboy isn’t subtle, bless him. From the get-go he’s just staring at Zach whenever he can.

Chapter two then switches to Zach when he gets home. We see that he and Ruben are actual friends, they’re texting and have little inside jokes. We also find out that Zach used to have a more punk vibe that he’s had to phase out for his boyband era. He sends, I believe it was, some demos to their manager, Geoff – who also happens to be Jon’s father, to see what he thinks, and he gets told to keep at it, but to maybe try something that would be “heard on the radio, or at a mall”. So, these first two chapters are giving very much neither of them are getting to be who they really want to be. And because I never actually mentioned it in the last point, Ruben is gay, but the record label doesn’t want him to be out publicly. But chapter two ends with Zach saying that girls have made him dumb, like how boys have made Ruben dumb, but when the two have a little chat, Zach says to himself that he’s right where he wants to be. Eyeball emoji. But to be fair, the blurb literally said that they begin a romance – I guess, when I think about it, the thing of this book was that matter of how it happens, not just the fact it does.

One thing I do have to say, as someone British. And I just want to say that the point I’m about to make is such a nothing point, nor is it a serious one, but, their first stop on this European tour is London, and in one of Zach’s chapters he turns on a TV in his hotel – in London – and the first thing that comes on is a re-run of Saturday Night Live (SNL). And I don’t know what hotels in London people have been staying in, but whenever I’ve turned on a TV in a hotel here in the UK, it’s always like BBC1, or ITV that’s on, because BBC1 is literally channel one. And I’m pretty sure they don’t play SNL. This could be because the hotel in this book is fancy, so it started on a different channel, but this has just not been my hotel experience personally. It’s always just on BBC or ITV and it’s always some daytime TV or news show that’s on.

Something I will say, I was expecting the romance to come along quicker than it did, given what the blurb is like. But I will say, I think the choice to have the romance start later than I was anticipating was a good thing for the pacing. I suppose if it had happened too early, then the rest of the events would have come quite a long stretch later, and then I think the book would have run the risk of having to fill that new space, then it might have suffered from having too much going on in it.

I also appreciated that the other two members of the band actually had stuff going on with them as well. I realise that might be a dumb thing to say, but I feel like it could have been quite easy to forget about Jon and Angel when the other two are the main focus of the book. I don’t want to spoil what’s going on with the other two, but since I did already mention that Jon’s father, Geoff, is, I believe, their manager – or if he wasn’t their manager, he was definitely in charge of them somehow. But that’s where a lot of his tension will come from. And then obviously because all four of them are in the band together, one person’s problem, by default, becomes the problem of everyone else. That doesn’t just mean the band members either, it goes beyond to the people around them, security, and the team at their record label.

Speaking of their record label, the book does mention that the band, Saturday, was one of the manufactured ones – think One Direction or Fifth Harmony – so the boys don’t actually have any say in what happens with their careers basically. It’s like they pretty much just do what they’re told, act how they’re told to act, and get paid for it. You can tell, with some characters more than others, that the band members, for as happy they are with their success, they do want a little more freedom. You see this in the book mostly with Zach, I feel. I previously mentioned that he had more of a punk vibe to him, and at one point he explicitly mentions that his group’s music isn’t the kind of music he’d want to make if he had the opportunity. And this happens, I won’t say how, but pretty heavily with Angel as well. It’s a wild concept that basically all four of them just want more freedom, which, given what I read, I’m not surprised they did.

And I often finish my posts off with closing thoughts on the ending. I liked it. With the point I’ve just made, with how the band was all feeling suffocated, I think the ending that happened was the best option for an ending. I’m thinking of how best to word this without spoiling anything, since the book has, as of me writing this, been out for two weeks. But like I’ve just said, I think the ending in the book was the best option for what could have been because I feel like the ending that we got encapsulates perfectly what the book was trying to get across, and how the main characters were feeling. I know that’s a horrendously vague way to word it, but I don’t think I can get more specific than that without spoiling anything.

Okay, bye!