Fireworks by Katie Cotugno

Publisher: HarperTeen
On Sale Date: April 18th 2017
Pages: 336
Age Range: Young Adult

Dana and Olivia are best friends. Olivia is since Dana can remember busy with singing and dancing classes, just training to be a star someday. One weekend Dana is joining Olivia in Orlando, where Olivia is going to an audition for a girl groep from famous producer Guy Monroe. For fun, Dana auditions too. Both Dana and Olivia are surprised when they hear that not only Olivia is admitted into the group, but Dana too! Before they know it, they are training in Orlando with the other girls to become famous. They stay in a house together, and close to them stay the members of a boy band who are also in the same kind of training by Guy Monroe's team. One the members is Alex, soon Dana is falling for, the earnest, endlessly talented boy who’s destined to be the next big thing. 

But soon their time in Orlando which seems to be every girl's dream come true, turns into something else. Between Olivia and Dana grows some serious competition. There is only room at the top for one girl and as Olivia has trained for this all her life, it seems unfair to her when Guy and his team pick Dana for this spot. Dana decides this isn't what she wants, and Guy immediately sends her back home.

Ah, this book was so much fun to read! I wasn't blown away by Katie's previous book 99 Days, but I really liked Fireworks!
It is a real fun book with a good storyline about two best friends who all of a sudden find themselves in the middle of showbizz. Olivia really thinks she is prepared for it, but is she really? Dana never thought of even auditioning, so for her everything is new, and it seems she is also quite good in being a member of the girl band, and even more, singing. I really liked how the author build up the friction between the two in the end.  And the romance between Dana and Olivia was very cute. And in the end everything went different then I expected, but I really liked it!

Overall a very nice and good contemporary YA novel set in the 1990's era of girl and boybands.