This Song Is About Me
Jan. 30th, 2026 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearYet another Netgalley ARC success for me!
This Song Is About Me by Melissa de la Cruz is a fictional nonfiction book, about a young girl rising to superstardom in the country music scene and then disappearing after an awards show many years later. It's built up of interviews with her various friends and coworkers, with the investigative journalist 'author' turning out to have more of a personal investment in the story than is initially apparent.
As with any book that includes transcripts of supposed interviews or journal entries or similar, the narrative doesn't quite hang together credibly as being authentic interviews, because nobody would report whole conversations or direct action scenes likes that when asked about it years later.
BUT - it *does* work as a fictional story that's compelling and well written with an interesting range of distinct voices. The narrative builds up cleverly and does a good job of maintaining the suspense - up until the point where it becomes very obvious what the answer to the mystery is, though for me, that was pretty late on. It does also suffer from a common issue with stories about the music industry, in that I really wanted to be able to listen to all the songs that are mentioned!
It's a pretty short book and, even given that, I'm not sure it has enough story to fill all its pages - but it did keep me reading to the end and I really enjoyed it overall.
This Song Is About Me by Melissa de la Cruz is a fictional nonfiction book, about a young girl rising to superstardom in the country music scene and then disappearing after an awards show many years later. It's built up of interviews with her various friends and coworkers, with the investigative journalist 'author' turning out to have more of a personal investment in the story than is initially apparent.
As with any book that includes transcripts of supposed interviews or journal entries or similar, the narrative doesn't quite hang together credibly as being authentic interviews, because nobody would report whole conversations or direct action scenes likes that when asked about it years later.
BUT - it *does* work as a fictional story that's compelling and well written with an interesting range of distinct voices. The narrative builds up cleverly and does a good job of maintaining the suspense - up until the point where it becomes very obvious what the answer to the mystery is, though for me, that was pretty late on. It does also suffer from a common issue with stories about the music industry, in that I really wanted to be able to listen to all the songs that are mentioned!
It's a pretty short book and, even given that, I'm not sure it has enough story to fill all its pages - but it did keep me reading to the end and I really enjoyed it overall.
