Beige

I’ll be honest here, I picked up Beige purely because there was a pink guitar on the cover. Pink guitar! But even though this was a slightly dodgy reason to read a book, I actually wasn’t disappointed with my choice. Beige is a very readable and sweet story about a shy girl called Katy, who is forced to stay with her estranged father for a summer. Katy’s dad is The Rat, the well-known drummer from a cult punk rock band Suck. What teenager wouldn’t want to stay with their ageing muso dad in LA, go to cool gigs and meet other famous musicians? Unfortunately Katy isn’t your average teenager. She’s quite straight, pretty nerdy and doesn’t share her father’s interest in music. She’s so straight that one of the LA girls she’s forced to hang out with nicknames her Beige on her first day there.

Beige is funny and touching. While I was initially annoyed by Katy (she’s so conservative and insecure and plain dumb sometimes you just want to shake her!), I grew to like her a lot over the course of the book. The Rat is also a great character - in a way he’s a big kid who never grew up. He’s struggled with drug addiction in the past, and has a pretty odd lifestyle, but he genuinely cares about Katy, even if he doesn’t always know how to show it. If you like flowery, poetic language, then Beige might not be for you, as the story is told in quite plain English. But if you like books where the main character gets challenged and changes in important ways, or if you have an interest in music, then you should definitely give this one a try.