Kill the Boy Band is a
Young Adult novel by Goldy Moldavsky. It details a wild night when three fangirls of a British
Boy Band, the Ruperts, kidnap one of the band members.
Tropes for this book include:
- Asshole Victim: The first Rupert was not the nicest guy, so it's hard to feel pity when he's strangled.
- Black Comedy: The entire novel runs on very dark humor.
- Bound and Gagged: What the girls do to the first Rupert, tying him to a chair and blindfolding him with stockings.
- Downer Ending: The girls completely get away with their antics that night, much to the narrator's consternation. She keeps trying to tell the truth to the cops, only they don't believe her because too many other fangirls confessed, with conflicting stories. The Ruperts have broken up, with two arrested for murder, and the Token Good Teammate looking for the narrator. Another group, however, breaks up: the narrator and Erin's friendship gang. Erin has ruined her friendship with the narrator for once. The narrator also breaks her by saying that she ruins things, without considering the consequences.
- Extremely Short Timespan: It takes place over twenty-four hours that the girls are in New York City.
- Fat Bastard / Fat Idiot: Apple is an obese Asian girl who knocks the first Rupert out by hugging him, is completely unaware that the first Rupert is both an asshole and gay, and extremely manipulative and dangerous (though so are most of the other fangirls).
- Gone Horribly Right: Erin wants to spend the night ruining the Ruperts once and for all. This is due to her previous attempt at seducing them gone wrong. She does, but she also ruins her friendship with the narrator. Said narrator calls her out for this, saying that Erin doesn't really care for other people and only about her revenge.
- Heel Face Doorslam: Erin, after stabbing the narrator in the back, drags her away from confessing to the police attempting to make up for outing her mental illness to the other girls and making everyone think she might have killed the first Rupert. She tries to justify that what happened was necessary, to take down the Ruperts and stop other fangirls' hearts from being broken. The narrator shuts her down by pointing out that murder is still murder, regardless of who did it, and the only thing Erin is good at is ruining things. Erin goes My God, What Have I Done?, especially when the narrator ends their friendship and refuses to speak to her.
- I Am Spartacus: The narrator can't get the police to believe her confession that she and her friends kidnapped and may have killed the least likable Rupert because dozens of other girls are claiming the same thing.
- Insane Equals Violent: Inverted and exploited. The narrator, who suffers from hallucinations, is by far the most moral person in their friend group. This doesn't stop Erin from trying to use her mental illness to scapegoat her.
- Karma Houdini:
- Not for a lack of trying on the narrator's part, given she tries to confess to the police twice but the Ruperts end up taking the fall for one of their own being murdered. Despite her efforts, the girls get away with the night's antics. Every time the narrator confesses, no one believes her. Erin keeps mum and no one else wants to admit the truth since they'd go to jail, or the police would also laugh at them.
- The actual murderer gets away with it after mistaking Rupert for cheating on her. She lets the narrator go since, as she points out, no one would think The Beard would be a strangler. The narrator grudgingly admits she has a point It helps that the story is too ludicrous to be believed.
- Kick the Morality Pet: The narrator is the only person to whom Erin is consistently nice, so much that the narrator has confided dark secrets in her. It's also why she goes along with Erin's plans to keep the first Rupert hostage, despite the fact that he's begging for his life. Erin realizes that she's gone too far when she reveals that the narrator suffers from hallucinations, and thus is "crazy," to the other girls. Erin then goes My God, What Have I Done? when the narrator runs off, half-convinced that she may have murdered the Rupert, and tries to rescue her from confessing to the police. The narrator in the climax hits her Rage Breaking Point and calls out Erin for making everyone complicit in the murder and coverup. This unsurprisingly ends their friendship.
- Loony Fan: It seems that all the Rupert fans are creepily obsessive by default.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Ruperts are based on One Direction and the reality show is clearly based on a combination of The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent.
- No Name Given: The protagonist gives out aliases from various 80s movies.
- Police Are Useless: None of them take the fangirls seriously, even when one is likely telling the truth about what happened.
- Take That!: The author is not a fan of boy bands, or of the girls that worship them. As we can see.
- Unreliable Narrator: Our unnamed protagonist suffers from hallucinations, and the whole thing may be one of many stories that Loony Fans of the Ruperts are telling the police.
