Sarah Priscus

What a thrill it is to read Sarah Priscus' 70s rock, California-dreaming Groupies. This shimmering debut is packed with tenderness and awe against a backdrop of drugs, sex, rock stars, and high drama. Faun is a lovable, believable, and wonderfully drawn character who will remain in my heart and mind for a very, very long time. -- Jessica Anya Blau, author of Mary Jane In a debut perfect for fans of Daisy Jones & The Six, Mary Jane, and The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, Sarah Priscus shines a bright light on the grungy yet glittery world of 1970s rock 'n' roll and the women - the groupies - who unapologetically love too much in a world that doesn't love them back. It's 1977, and Faun Novak is in love with rock 'n' roll. After her mother's death, Faun, a naïve college dropout, grabs her Polaroid and hops a Greyhound to Los Angeles. In the City of Angels, she reconnects with her charismatic childhood friend Josie, now an up-and-coming model and muse. To make their reunion even sweeter, Josie is now dating Cal Holiday, the frontman of the superstar rock band Holiday Sun, and Faun is positively mesmerized. Except it's not just the band she can't get enough of. It's also the proud groupies who support them in myriad ways. Among the groupies are: a doting high school girl at war with her mother; a drug-dealing wife and new mom who longs to be a star herself; and a cynical mover-and-shaker with a soft spot for Holiday Sun's bassist. Faun obsessively photographs every aspect of this dazzling new world, struggling to balance her artistic ambitions with the band's expectations. As her confidence grows for the first time in her life, her priorities shift. She becomes reckless with friendship, romance, her ethics, and her bank account. But just as everything is going great and her boring, old life is falling away, Faun realizes just how blind she has been to the darkest corners of this glamorous musical dreamland as the summer heats up and everything spirals out of control . . . Equal parts an evocative coming-of-age and a cutting look at fame, desire, and the media, Groupies is a novel that will have you turning the pages until the music- and drug-fueled end.

Groupies

Lindsey Barnett

Why did every moment only exist in terms of its relation to the past?

Emma Hak-Kovacs

We wanted the specialness that only comes from having someone special like you.

Yvonne’s stories were so good they didn’t need to be real.

Was I selfish? The night was full of self-interest. Why shouldn’t it have been? It was foolish to forget other people could feel, but I still did it. I was twenty-three and always a little drunk. I was proud and pretty and beaming. I’d just talked my way into a dream job. I was making people like me. If that sprung from vanity, then I wanted to continue.

The line between selfishness and self-improvement was so thin and everything I saw was blurry anyway.

As much as Cal thought she was his, and Josie thought she belonged to rock and roll, I thought she was mine. We were all wrong. She was no one's and everyone's.

We were told to need love, then spat on once we dared to ask for it. Once we tried to defend our right to it.

We loved painting each other's faces and braiding each other's hair and cheating the bill at restaurants and yelling back at catcallers and kissing strangers and chewing stolen breath mints and telling everyone we were importantall the bright, free pleasures of a discount-driven life lived out of motel rooms and strangers' beds.

Groupies quotes

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