What I like so much about this book is that it is straight up. It is able to portray how meaningful and emotionally satisfying it is to really be into music, and at the same time skirt on the edge of becoming the kids becoming major musicians without blowing it out of the water. I like it because it isn't fake - everything isn't easy, nothing is handed to them, and in the end it doesn't totally work out for them. But it isn't a total bust either. It's a lot more realistic that books that have these insane tragedies that people miraculously recover from in the end, and the characters are able to grow and change and realize their mistakes and realize what they couldn't control but could learn something from in the end.
Peter is just an average kind of kid, who goes through the same stuff everyone does in high school, and for a while it seems like he's gonna make it. But when he doesn't, he doesn't fall apart. He's learned a lot from his meetings with industry professionals and doing gigs all over the place and becoming locally famous. He also has a lot going on in his life but nothing is overblown. Like sometimes you'll read a book and the main character will have an alcoholic father who doesn't really act like a grown-up and a dead mother and a complicated girlfriend and that will be so much for them that that's what the whole book is about. But we all know people who have problems like that, even worse problems, and they get on with their lives and somehow make it work. Not that it isn't hard, but as Peter says, "You have to deal with it. You have to keep going." So I like that the book keeps those things in proportion and allows Peter to have this great and wonderful thing going on with his band.
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