Fifteen-year-old Dani Truehart is on her way to becoming the next big singing sensation. She has been working so hard for this for the last few years, egged on by her pushy mother who sees her daughter as a money-making machine.

When her mother oversteps the mark one too many times, Dani’s dance/vocal coach offers her a solution, he wants to become her guardian and take away her mother’s right to have anything to do with her daughter’s career. He also believes he can get her a deal with a music producer.

But moving to a new state, alone, to stay with people she barely knows and thrown into the limelight is starting to take its toll on her. Is she cut out to be the next rising star?

The first book in a planned series, The Rise and Fall of Dani Truehart, is a YA tale following the music career of the protagonist. The author, Michele Kwasniewski, clearly knows this industry very well as the scenes and situations came across very realistically. However, sometimes having the knowledge means that you try to share everything with the reader and at times the plot came a little bogged down with information that didn’t add anything to the story.

Not having any connections to this kind of industry, being in the UK, and a mother of a fifteen-year-old I found myself wondering why on earth someone would sign their daughter over to another and let them take them hundreds of miles away on their own to live in the same house a fully grown man. But like I said I don’t know this world and it most likely happens a lot. This also shows I became emotionally attached to the story.

This is a book I can see YA readers devouring. It is fast-paced in sections and was easy to read. Dani is a character that I am sure teenagers will be able to connect with, it will also show them just what they will have to do if they too want this life and that it isn’t’ a career filled with just sunshine and roses.