MG Review: Drum Roll, Please

Drum Roll, Please by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

Published: To be released June 26th, 2018 by HarperCollins
Genre: Contemporary MG
Binding: eARC
Page Count: Goodreads says 320 pages, and I'm going with that because I don't know otherwise.
Part of a series? Nope.
Got via: I got it for review through Edelweiss.
Amazon / Book Depository / Indiebound

Summary (from goodreads): Find the confidence to rock out to your own beat.

Melly only joined the school band because her best friend, Olivia, begged her to. But to her surprise, quiet Melly loves playing the drums. It’s the only time she doesn’t feel like a mouse.

Now, she and Olivia are about to spend the next two weeks at Camp Rockaway, jamming under the stars in the Michigan woods.

But this summer brings big changes for Melly: her parents split up, her best friend ditches her, and Melly finds herself falling for a girl at camp named Adeline. To top it off, Melly's not sure she has what it takes to be a real rock 'n' roll drummer. Will she be able to make music from all the noise in her heart?

Review: This was really cute. This is basically if My Year of Epic Rock and Star-Crossed had a little book baby. There are a handful of things I took issue with, but for the most part, I had fun reading this, and I liked it. We'll get to the things I didn't like a bit later, though. I've read a lot of MG over the years, both recent and older, and this is what I'd call a very classic-feeling middle grade novel. All of the beats it hits, from Melly dealing with her parents' divorce to learning to be more confident, to a first romance, to having friendship problems and learning how to handle that, are very classic MG things.

And also it's queer. There are not nearly as many of those as there needs to be, obviously, and I also think that this does something really awesome by having basically no angst about it. Melly has a couple moments of feelng like, "Well, this is new", and being a little worried about how her best friend will react to the news that Melly likes a girl, but other than that, it's really not a big deal for her. It's refreshingly light.

Plot Talk: Like I said, this is basically a super classic summer camp book. Girl goes to summer camp, makes new friends, gets a little confidence boost, has a little romance, goes home. It's a typical book, in a way, but that's a good thing, not a bad thing. The plot honestly is just what it needs to be for this kind of book. It takes place over two weeks, and it really nails the way a summer vacation can feel both over far too fast and also like it'll last forever. One of my favourite parts was a rainy day at camp and the way the book perfectly depicted the restlessness of a rainy day where you're not entirely sure where you want to be or what you want to do. It's a very nice touch.

Characters: I really liked Melly. She's really sweet. She did actually remind me of Mattie from Star-Crossed now and then because they're both quite shy, and developing a little more confidence through the book. Again, that's a pretty classic middle grade thing. I could probably name several much older books with similar themes for their main characters, and I have no problem with that. It's a staple, not a cliche.

Melly's best friend and tentmates really remind me of classic middle grade books, especially middle grade camp books. They aren't, like, the most complex characters ever. They do tend to kind of have one "thing" and that's who they are/most of their personality. I'm not overly fussed about that, honestly.

PG-13 stuff: Melly's parents are going through a divorce, and Adeline's father has MS, and I think both are handled well, I think. The MS part is not something I can speak to, but the break-up part is definitely is. I liked how her parents made some pretty big mistakes, and they eventually admitted that and apologized to Melly. There's nothing here that I think a kid would be overly upset by, though. Melly doesn't face really any queermisia or anything either.

Cons, complaints, bad stuff, etc.: I have a couple things. The book calls out sexism now and then, but it never goes beyond "both boys and girls". One example in particular is a mention of both female and male musicians - apparently there's no room for nonbinary or agender musicians like La Roux's Elly Jackson, Grey Gritt, Angel Haze, Rae Spoon, CN Lester, Jana Hunter, or Gerard Way.

Otherwise, while the book does have a number of POC characters and that's obviously really cool, it does lack in other forms of representation. This big music camp apparently only has four queer attendees. Two queer boys who are dating and only mentioned once, and Melly and her love interest. It's kind of a bummer that besides those two - and they don't get names! - there are no queer role models of older teens, or queer adults. There's also no disability rep besides Adeline's father, and no fat rep besides one adult character.

My last thing is - the book doesn't use the word bisexual, but it uses the word gay. I don't mean to overly compare this Star-Crossed, but I'm 90% sure these are currently the only MG books with bisexual main characters, so it's kinda gonna happen. And they both do this. Publishing, please allow queer MG to actually use the word bisexual. The characters don't have to settle on a label, but please let them at least know words other than "gay".

Editing Laina: Star-Crossed has been edited so the paperback will include the word bisexual! Heck yeah, that's exciting.

Cover comments: I think it's really cute. I like that you can see the tent, because it really feels like a camp book through that. It's a really sweet cover, and I like the colour scheme.

Conclusion: Overall, I really enjoyed reading this, and my only problems were the cissexist language and the lack of representation in certain areas. This is where I find the book falls into the trappings of "typical MG", and misses out on being truly amazing. However, it's still a good book and, again, I'm going to point out this is the second mainstream MG book with a bisexual main character. (I'm obviously not counting indies and self-published books here, as for this age group, those are much harder for the target audience to come across.) That's important.

I read this way too early before it comes out, lol, so my scheduling is like four months in advance, and there's only like one review out that like at all, so I can't really find ownvoices reviews yet. And I don't want to creepily stalk people. But personally I had a lot of fun reading this and thought it was really sweet, and I think other people will like it a lot, too. I'm gonna go with four out of five roses.

I don't have any other notes, I think!

Peace and cookies,
Laina