There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

If we can get past the cultural appropriation of the name of the title and the cover art, it's a pretty good and unique story with an insta-love trope that some love to hate or hate to love. Should come with trigger warnings as it explores darker themes like violence and drugs.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley long ago and am just now getting to reading it. Thank you NetGalley for my free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Not my cup of tea. AT ALL ... And by that I don't mean the YA love story. This book was ridden with drug use that was not only acceptable but also encouraged. I feel like it sends a terrible message to YA's. There was one drug that was deadly , but all the other drugs were ok. So not cool. And the constant sex that the band members were involved in was disgusting. I really disliked this book, I gave it 2 stars because it wasn't poorly written, just a terrible story with horrific messages.

Sugar Skulls by Lisa Hantchey and Glenn Dallas is kind of like Jem and The Holograms meets the plot from Monsters Inc. But in a darker, grittier, electronic neon punk way.

In the world of Sugar Skulls, energy is harvested as “thrum” which is produced by young adults engaging in sex, drugs, and rock & roll – all highly managed, monitored, and regulated by “Corporate”. Cyrene is the city where this all takes place, a playground of excess, but the city is also pretty much like a giant power plant and the inhabitants are treated like living batteries. The Sugar Skulls are a neon punk metal band owned by Corporate and one of their most valuable assets from the amount of thrum their fans produce. Vee is the lead singer of the Sugar Skulls with a voice that regularly causes thrum collectors to blow and can generate city-wide blackouts from overloading the grid. Bored and disillusioned, when Vee locks eyes with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy, a single seemingly unaffected person in a sea of screaming fans, he somehow manages to sear himself into her thoughts.

Micah is an underground runner of illicit, not Corporate-regulated contraband, who parkours all over the city while trying to stay under the radar. When he hears Vee sing for the first time, her voice hits him deep and lights him up in ways he hasn’t felt since a bad dose of the illegal street drug Applejack almost killed him and kicked him off the grid permanently. From then on, he becomes obsessed with meeting the singing siren.

Even though both are obsessed with each other, between Micah trying to avoid being arrested and Vee’s possessive manager and busy concert schedule, they don’t actually really meet until over halfway through the book. When they do meet, obsession bleeds into instalove of the willing-to-die-for-you variety and they’ll battle anything and everything to stay together. And they really are put to the test – it gets violent, bloody, and down right hopeless before it gets better.

P.s. – their love for each other causes them to spontaneously compose verses and write songs about each other and just overall think lyrically.

The plot was really interesting and the setting was pretty cool, but for some reason, I had trouble staying with the story. I think the problem was flow. We switch back and forth between Vee and Micah’s first person POVs quite frequently, every few pages or so, and the bouncing from one perspective to the other kind of disrupts the flow and made it hard for me to settle into a groove. I also was a bit “meh” about the ending – both Vee and Micah have gritty, dark backstories involving things like fatal drug overdoses and rape, things that are important to the plot and where it leads – and yet the end was a little… bubble gum? Even the antagonists have somewhat happy endings. But then again the antagonists weren’t like evil-for-evil’s-sake villains, they had their own dark backstories and motivations for their actions, which I can appreciate. Bonus points for multi-dimensional characters.

Overall, I really did enjoy the idea behind the book and I liked the characters and the setting was amazing – honestly, this would probably make a pretty kick-ass movie. It was a bit hard for me to stay engaged, but it was worth it to stick around for the world-building, unique premise, and actually pretty likable characters.

I really enjoyed this read! It was something different, which is great since so many YA titles seem to be the same now a days. Would love to see this made into a series if that's in the works, it had me hooked from the very first concert scene!