Saturday has everything a boy band should: sleek choreography, stylish clothes, and, of course, enough personality and intrigue to keep the world interested.
Ruben Montez and Zach Knight comprise one-half of this infallible formula. Ruben, the musical-theater–obsessed son of wealthy Spanish immigrants, tones down his energy and his incredible voice on stage to fit the cookie-cutter image of ordinary boy next door. Zach, a White boy from Oregon, is a leather-clad rebel in front of the cameras and a devoted and thoughtful son to his single mother behind them. As they embark on their first international tour, these four 18-year-olds—Ruben, Zach, and band mates Angel Phan (cued as Vietnamese American) and Jon Braxton (who has a Black mom and a White dad who is Saturday’s band manager)—wrestle with the expectations of their fans, their management team, their grueling touring schedule, their parents, and, most of all, their own bounding, leaping hearts. In this unexpectedly poignant love story, the glamorous facade of stardom is peeled away to reveal the human cogs of the great pop-culture machine. While often comfortably formulaic, the story subverts expectations in refreshing ways: Family conflict stems from causes other than bigotry, mental health struggles are acknowledged and destigmatized, and, pleasingly, in this story about the pitfalls of boy-band fame, teenage girls aren’t the villains.
A lively novel with as much appeal as the band itself.
(Fiction. 14-18)