Confessions of a Karaoke Queen – Ella Kingsley

Confessions Of A Karaoke Queen
Ella Kingsley

Maddie Mulhern is suddenly in charge. Her parents – former 80s pop duo Pineapple Mist – have left on a nostalgia tour, entrusting her to manage their struggling karaoke bar, Sing It Back. Panicking over the finances, Maddie takes a gamble: she signs up for a fly-on-the-wall reality TV series. With her faithful staff (divalicious drag queen Ruby, shy barman Simon and wannabe actress Jasmine) she’ll transform the bar into a huge success. Right?

Executive Producer Evan Bergman known that scandal sells. It’s no coincidence that he hires cool, attractive Nick Craven as the TV show’s director. Evan wants drama on screen – and he’ll do anything to get it.

As the series builds to a live finale, will Maddie see the truth in a Careless Whisper? Will Nick be able to keep his Poker Face? One thing’s for sure: we all do things at karaoke we live to regret…

I must say I was slightly dubious of Confessions of a Karaoke Queen from the get go. Between the slightly too similar to Sophie Kinsella pseudonym of Ella Kingsley, to the slightly too familiar title, it was as if the book was suffering some sort of identity crisis. And when I started reading it, it felt like it too.

As the reader you are part of an audience watching the trials and tribulations of Maddie Mulhern and her attempts to get her parents’ karaoke bar back on track while they’re away touring Europe performing as Pineapple Mist – a famous 1980s pop act. After being thrown into the deep end and struggling to make sense of her parents’ finances, Maddie is sent a saving grace in the form of a reality-TV-show opportunity that sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is…

I love a good piece of chick lit. I like the carefree escapism you get reading about silly but realistic people getting in to silly but realistic situations (most of the time) and characters you can kind of relate to. Kingsley failed to provide a single believable character or course of events so it was just too much effort to even try to care about any of them – and as they are the focus of the book, it caused a massive problem. I’d even go as far to say that Maddie annoyed me, let alone the rest of the supporting characters.

The problem with the massive cast of friends, colleagues, foes and love interests is that there’s no balance between them. You had caricatures like Jaz, the “Gaga-esque” wannabe actress, and her pet guinea pig, that were so unbelievable and so detailed that it felt more like padding than a valuable presence. You had the stereotypical TV executive, Evan Bergman, who “surprisingly” turns out to be not a nice guy. You have the supportive but wishy-washy best friend Lou, who you kind of forget about unless she’s right in front of you. And you have the two opposing love interests that never really reveal anything and feel like they were written to fill a hole.

We don’t even know much about Maddie as all the information given to us is superficial. We are introduced to her believing that she’s intelligent and pretty level headed but within the first few chapters she starts acting like a teenage girl who can’t handle the situation and we never really progress from that.

The book is full of false leads and unimportant information that never amounts to anything. From finding out Maddie’s real name, which is built up from the start of the book, to the incessant cultural references, it just feels like there was a loose plot that needed to be filled. Even the love triangle between Maddie, Lawrence and Nick is predictable, unbelievable and weak.

I have seen other reviews where people have loved it and thought it was fun and witty, but I honestly found it a struggle to read. My eyes even started to hurt from the amount of eye rolling I was doing towards the end. Maybe I had expectations that hadn’t been met or maybe it just wasn’t for me, but in all honesty I could have quite happily put this down halfway through, guessed the ending and then never pick it up again.

I do think it’s a real shame that it didn’t work for me as Confessions of a Karaoke Queen has an unusual setting and a promising concept but unfortunately that’s all pushed into the background to explore the relationships surrounding it. There were glimmers of hope in complex characters like Ruby/Rob but they just floated off to the background too.

Some people out there will love it and completely disagree with me but it certainly didn’t “Take My Breath Away” – sorry, I couldn’t resist…

Thank you to Little Brown for sending me this book to review.

Rating: ★★★★★