TANGENT SISTERS

A teenager finds her world rocked when she auditions to become a member of a brand-new girl group in Cairo’s YA novel.

Fifteen-year-old Garland Fast is a high school student living with her younger sister and a single mother who struggles to make ends meet. She desperately dreams of escaping Milwaukee and starting a new life filled with money and fame—so when her best friend, Candace, mentions auditions for a new girl group at a local recording studio, Garland jumps at the chance. She manages to snag an audition invite from Kendra, a peer Candace refers to as “a bit of a slut.” Despite some obstacles along the way—including the need to convince her mom to sign a parental permission slip to advance in the competition and the increasingly brutal audition process, which involves one-on-one practice with a vocal coach and mastery of recording skills, and choreography—Garland impresses record executive Donnell Booker, who is dazzled by the teenager’s ability to read music. When she discovers she’s included in the final two groups of girls, Garland feels her dream come tantalizingly close: “It would not be accurate to say the following release of nerves was so powerful it bordered on the sexual. It was sexual. There was no bordering about it. Garland was a virgin and didn’t smoke, yet in that moment, she understood the desire for an after-sex cigarette.” Garland and her fellow competitors struggle to stay on top as they are expected to work 12 hours a day, six days per week. A shocking change to the initial concept of a five-person musical group leaves all the girls reeling, and Garland makes a serious mistake that could cost her everything. 

Cairo manages to get in some shrewd digs at the music industry as a whole, with Donnell admitting that, while they can’t say it aloud, anyone who is overweight or “not pretty” doesn’t stand a chance at the auditions. The author also offers occasional food for thought when it comes to music’s universal appeal: “Any song could be a girl group song. Any song could be a black song. All that mattered was attitude, passion, and harmony.” Unfortunately, any minor insights that the novel may offer are consistently and thoroughly overshadowed by a host of problematic elements. These include rampant sexism (“What [he] also recognized was the natural jealousy of women. They didn’t operate in the same manner as men”); victim blaming (Donnell admits to sleeping with an underage girl, then claims his “only excuse is her single-mindedness—she doesn’t take no for an answer”); and a graphic, multi-page scene of 16-year-old Garland—who, readers are repeatedly reminded, is a virgin—masturbating to thoughts of her much older mentor while reminiscing about the hardcore rape porn that she likes to watch. The result of all of this is a narrative that feels like a caricature of what teenage girls look like, act like, and feel—with little to no sense of any authenticity. And that presents a huge hurdle when it comes to getting readers to care about what happens to Garland and her friends.

A music-soaked fantasy whose frenetic plot is overshadowed by tired stereotypes and the sexualization of underage girls.