Circa 2017, three of the the four young women who once made up the pop sensation Gloss, are thrown back together to promote an upcoming movie they cameoed in, fifteen years after the height of their fame. They get along, but their discomfort is clear from the first page, and their world is rocked minutes later, in the middle of a radio interview, when they learn that their missing fourth member, Cassidy, has just died.

For fans of [b:Daisy Jones & The Six|40597810|Daisy Jones & The Six|Taylor Jenkins Reid|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580255154l/40597810._SY75_.jpg|61127102] and Emily Gould’s [b:Perfect Tunes|52961993|Perfect Tunes|Emily Gould|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585300620l/52961993._SX50_SY75_.jpg|58237505], this debut novel comes out of the gates swinging, aiming directly for your heart with the palpitation-inducing language that is usually found in a thriller, each member of the former girl group has something to say about their relationship to Cassidy and their worry about how she may have ended up dead. Just thirty pages in, at the start of Part 1 and the real meat of the book, I was wholly invested. Utilizing the other women’s voices, Rose, Merry, and Yumi, in the present, dealing with the fallout of Cassidy’s death provides stark contrast to Cassidy’s innocent first-person account of the events of the past that led to her star’s rise and fall. The vibe felt much like the experience I had reading [b:My Dark Vanessa|44890081|My Dark Vanessa|Kate Elizabeth Russell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1583447793l/44890081._SY75_.jpg|67044583].

At the end of 1999, Cassidy is fresh off of the set of Sing It, America, where she made it to the finals but placed as a runner-up when she’d expected to win it all. Instead of heading full steam into a recording contract before her eighteenth birthday, she headed home to Houston where her parents expected her to make up all of her missed school assignments. Feeling especially dejected when her friends graduate without her in the spring, and have plans lined up for summer and beyond, when her contact at Big Disc Records offers Cassidy an audition for a girl group looking for a fourth, she jumps at the chance.

It takes a lot of time and energy and dieting to put in the work on their first album and the press and sponsorships that go along with it, and though she has a lonely start despite the close proximity to the other girls, Cassidy is living her dream. There's tons of money and parties and so many people idolize them all. In the face of their stardom, cracks appear in the personas they play for their audiences, threatening to unravel their success. They have to make a choice: keep playing the big shows and make buckets of money, or stand up for themselves and their integrity and leave it all behind.