Amplified (review)

Trying to make up for her deadbeat mom and meet her father's demands, Jasmine has been an overachiever all her life. Her true love is music, though—industrial rock, to be precise—and now that she's finished high school, all she wants is a year to explore that love and get over her school burnout. When she tells her dad, he kicks her out. Luckily, an industrial rock band is looking for someone to double as guitarist and roommate, and Jasmine, on the basis of her mad guitar skills and bald-faced lies about her performance experience (she has none), gets the gig. It's a wish-fulfillment premise, but Kelly goes beyond that to explore the hard work that goes into making a band successful, the messy social dynamics of the band scene, and the emotional perils of making the one stable source of fulfillment in your life into your meal ticket. The band members themselves are engagingly drawn, with lesbian lead singer and de facto big sis Veta a standout, and grumpy, good-hearted drummer Sean the perfect candidate for bittersweet romance. Coming from a financially privileged background and earning her own way for the first time, Jasmine is an interesting and appealing blend of earnestness and attitude; she's more naïve than entitled, but she's determined to be self-sufficient and too proud to ask for help, even when she needs it. Her discomfort onstage is painfully realistic, tying in well with her overall issues surrounding vulnerability, and readers will sympathize deeply with her fear that she is only barely keeping it together. There's inevitable fallout when Jasmine's secrets are revealed, but Jasmine isn't one to accept setbacks to her dream, and readers will be rooting for her and her newfound family to make it big.