How NOT to Murder a Boyband: Final novel in The Boyband Sandwich Trilogy

...goes bigger, bolder and more bizarre.

Jason Roche’s How NOT to Murder a Boyband is a modern-day feminist novel with a unique female protagonist – and the third and final instalment of the ‘The Boyband Sandwich Trilogy’ Bringing his laugh out loud funny and insightful The Boyband Sandwich trilogy to a close, author Jason Roche delivers his best novel to-date.

Published on 25th October 2022, this new instalment returns readers to the contrived world of the boyband, but its biggest surprise, and delight, is that How NOT to Murder a Boyband is in fact a feminist novel with an intriguing and highly original female protagonist.

Set twenty years on from the author’s first exploration of his subject matter, readers find themselves in the midst of 2020s boyband land, with a chatty and animated narrative that shares the ripple effect an ensemble of evolved modern boybands and celebrities have on the world and the women (mothers and girlfriends) around them.

Refreshing, observational and out and out funny, The Boyband Sandwich Trilogy cements Jason Roche’s reputation as one of today’s freshest and most original writers. Miss this trilogy at your peril.

Synopsis:

Boybands have changed. Not in what they wear or the music they produce but in their spiritual significance to this generation. They’ve cleaned up to the point where they are likeable; they’re relevant and their tunes are half decent. The past naff quota has been replaced either with elderly dignity or fresh disadvantaged background dun-good sympathy: ‘They’re nice lads!’

So what I’m about to tell you will come across ever the more shocking, ever the more trend-busting, ever the more deeeeeeep. What is the actual formula to NOT Murder a Boyband?

I’m dating one.

Friendships that go beyond friendship are not bound by what you believe you have in common or honesty or selflessness or spiritual connection or anything you formed on a last season social media platform (in fact all social media is now last season) but rather a common purpose and a sense of shared travail; a bind perhaps stronger than familial: conjoined twins so that there are no metaphorical ropes between you but actual skin where the only way to separate is to actually tear, cut or scythe flesh. An image a bit too Sky Horror for this time of the morning sorry, but hey what’s a girl to do when showing some real love for her sister. Or sisters more precisely. Seven hairless (bar one), hapless (bar three), hopeful, harmful, hedonistic (bar four), healthy (bar two) heroines.

All of whom are dating a Boyband.

The author says:

“I wanted to explore the idea of what Boybands had become in the 2020s and how their image had evolved from the early noughties’ heyday. I also wanted to tell a story from a female perspective, one impacted by a Boyband, so what better mechanism than to write the conclusion of the trilogy in the first person from the perspective of a woman dating a member of a Boyband. I really had such fun with this perspective, with a new level of writing, expression and narrative freedom that could introduce a coterie of unique female characters and modern Boybands.

“My latest novel is the continuation of How to Murder a Boyband, a contemporary story for the modern generation, but on steroids. I have amped up the ante, scale, consequences and outlandishness, resulting in a novel that is not only oodles of fun to read but equally epitomises a hard-hitting message about societal gender injustices and the ramifications of symbolic retribution. No reader should ever be the same after reading How NOT to Murder a Boyband and the optimistic intention was that this novel becomes the line in the sand for a generation and blueprint for the way the world should be moving.

“This is a book about heroines … all gloriously flawed yet an era-altering antidote to the world’s persistent failures, shortcomings and accepted norms. Seven plus one deadly reasons to believe in sin. Reading How NOT to Murder a Boyband will take courage and resolve but ultimately be anthemic for women and an ominous warning for men … shots fired … a cautionary tale, a trepidatory glance over the shoulder should your life’s work embody anything other than the utmost integrity, decency and chivalry.”

Published by Cranthorpe Millner Publishers, How NOT to Murder a Boyband (ISBN: 978-1-80378-098-6) is published on 25th October 2022 and is available in paperback (£10.99) and Kindle format.

Waterstones | Amazon | Cranthorpe Millner