“Why do lesbians have so many feelings?” (★★★★☆, 4/5)
Don’t let the cover and synopsis fool you – Poptastic isn’t your run of the mill, fluffy celebrity romance, and, at least in my opinion, that’s a good thing! I went into Poptastic expecting a quick, lighthearted read, something totally unlike the dense, dark fantasies I’ve been reading as of late. The majority of the story fit within those bounds, but it goes to some dark places (see content warnings at the bottom of the post).
Victoria Holmes’ debut novel, Poptastic, follows Julia, a lesbian in her late twenties stuck in a job she hates. Julia spends most of her time scrolling through the sapphic dating app Kiss’er, worried that she’s already dated all the available lesbians in London. The official synopsis already focuses heavily on the bridesmaid and celebrity dating aspects, so I wanted to talk about some of the less publicized aspects of the novel, because they were the things that really sold Poptastic for me. However, the synopsis is important for context, so I’ll go ahead and share it here:
“Bridesmaiding is a tedious business at the best of times, but as Julia discovers, the task is particularly cumbersome when one of the brides is your ex and her fiancée won’t stop sulking about it.
With the wedding threatening to dominate everything for the rest of the year, a bewildering embrace with a devastatingly attractive pop star offers a welcome distraction. Dating Krisha catapults Julia away from the paltry concerns of dress fittings and hen dos, but it also takes her away from her friends, and directly leads to her most disastrous fuck up yet. Much to her surprise, she discovers that embracing the role she’d accepted so reluctantly might just be exactly what she needs.”
To me, Poptastic was primarily a story of personal growth more than anything else. From the very beginning of the book, Julia is rapidly headed towards a self-destructive breakdown. She drinks entirely too much, accomplishes nothing at work despite repeated warnings, and treats her friends like shit. For the first half of the book, I hated her, because she reminded me of myself before I got sober. I just wanted to shake her. Julia’s “relationship” with popstar Krisha Mistry made me profoundly uncomfortable, because I could see right through Krisha’s intentions from the get go and it drove me crazy that Julia couldn’t (this is just another point to Holmes in the realism category, though).
Eventually, Julia crashes and burns, hitting rock bottom. It was the moment I had been waiting and hoping for the entire book, and was worried I wouldn’t get, more from bad past experiences with books than anything Holmes did wrong. Reading as Julia suddenly became self-aware and tried to right her wrongs was honestly refreshing. Even more refreshing was the fact that her friends didn’t make it easy for her – Julia tried at least a dozen times to apologize to her best friend Kit, and the two were only finally able to make up after a shared traumatic experience (that I won’t go into because of spoilers).
In the latter half of the novel, Julia almost made a few questionable decisions that I worried would unravel all of her hard won progress, but changed her mind before she could do anymore lasting damage. The ending of Poptastic was sweet and wholesome and wonderful and made the entire wild emotional rollercoaster of the novel worth it.
In closing: this isn’t the review I expected to write, because Poptastic turned out not to be the novel I expected to read. If you’re not a fan of romance novels and find yourself tempted to give this one a pass, I’d urge you to at least download a sample. There’s so much more to this story than meets the eye. Holmes knocked it out of the park with the realism here, an – as a former alcoholic/all around nightmare of a person – I heavily related to both Julia’s toxic behavior and her transformation from garbage person into reliable friend and girlfriend.
A big thank you to Victoria Holmes for being the first author I don’t know personally to send me an e-ARC for review! I look forward to reading your future novels!
Poptastic is available for pre-order here, and will be out May 7th!
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Note: Please pay special attention to the content warnings listed below. Though Holmes handles the sensitive topics well and with respect, Poptastic does include some potentially triggering content, so read with care! ❤
Poptastic At a Glance:
Genre: Romantic Comedy, Lesbian Romance
Themes/Tropes: Friends to Lovers, Celebrity Dating
LGBT Rep? Yes – nearly everyone in this novel is gay. Julia’s best work friend is literally the token straight person.
Content Warnings (CW): Intimate partner violence (emotional and physical abuse), fairly graphic suicide attempt, drug use/overdoses
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