Fondness for the Reckless, A

A Fondness for the Reckless: A Ten Past Midnight Story
by Jennifer Jacoby-Smith
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing
Review by Toby A. Welch  
$24.95 ISBN 9781778690488

Life is busy and reading time often gets squeezed between laundry cycles and those last minutes before sleep takes a hold of me. That’s my reality, even as a book nerd. But all that – my day job, the house chores, even my gym classes – came to a screeching halt when I picked up A Fondness for the Reckless. I couldn’t put this entertaining book down!

You don’t have to be interested in the music industry – I’m not – to fall into Indie’s fascinating world. The book follows him from a boy with big dreams of being a music star to someone actually living the life: recording, performing, navigating the personalities of a boy band, and figuring out who he is and what he wants. The details of the journey are crisp and surprisingly addictive. 

A Fondness for the Reckless jumps all over the place in terms of timelines. We meet present-day Indie in 2016 as he jets off to secure a music deal. We rewind to 2009 and 2010, when he is a teen sneaking into clubs and navigating high school life. The 2012 stretch is my favourite when he is building his career as a deejay, especially the image of his grandma driving him to nightclub gigs where he works. We’re there with him through his high school graduation, the after-party at a nearby cabin, and his reluctant parental-pushed detour into university while his heart is off chasing music. 

I was curious how Jacoby-Smith came up with the subtitle: A Ten Past Midnight Story. Did it allude to Santa coming down the chimney? Was it a subliminal message about starting a new day? I was wrong on both counts. The truth is charmingly simple. When Indie and CJ were trying to come up with a “kick-ass name” for their Canadian boy band, Indie glanced at his watch and the time was ten past midnight. As Indie pointed out, “Midnight is always a magical time… It marks both the depths of night and the beginning of a new day.” Once Indie realized it would make a cool logo, the name stuck. 

There’s a special pleasure in seeing familiar places in the pages. Author Jacoby-Smith lives in Saskatoon and the Saskatchewan touches add a charm to all the pop star chaos. (For example, one of the characters studies medicine in Saskatoon.) Good stuff!

Whether or not you care about the music biz, A Fondness for the Reckless is a wildly entertaining ride. Reach for it when you want to lose an evening or two in someone else’s dream world. 

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM