I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone Review

Title: I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone
Author: Stephanie Kuehnert

Summary:

A raw, edgy, emotional novel about growing up punk and living to tell.

The Clash. Social Distortion. Dead Kennedys. Patti Smith. The Ramones. Punk rock is in Emily Black’s blood. Her mother, Louisa, hit the road to follow the incendiary music scene when Emily was four months old and never came back.

Now Emily’s all grown up with a punk band of her own, determined to find the tune that will bring her mother home. Because if Louisa really is following the music, shouldn’t it lead her right back to Emily?

Review:

I was a bit...scared when I started reading this book because of all the amazing things I'd heard about it and I didn't want to not like it. Once I started reading it I realized that I had nothing to worry about, that this book was well worth all of the praise it has gotten. Stephanie wrote about the music scene, in the late eighties and the early nineties, so well that I felt I was actually there (Well, I was, but I was too young then to really be into music...other than Barney); the way she had described music was so magical and otherworldly. Emily was so perfect to me, she was so incredibly real, and all of her flaws and problems throughout the book made her seem like a real person with real choices, and mistakes, made. Needless to say, Stephanie knows how to write a hit.