Teaser Tuesday: Royce Rolls by Margaret Stohl

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Ambrosia of The Purple Booker.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Royce Rolls by Margaret Stohl.

Royce Rolls – Freeform

“I’m an LG…B…TZ…B”
“You already hit B,” Bach said, amused. “But I appreciate you throwing the bonus Z in there. For all the Zesbians.”
— Chapter 8

They’re your family. You have to do whatever you can to help them, or you have to live with knowing that you walked away.
— Chapter 22

Here goes nothing: Show of hands for everyone who doesn’t (officially) watch so-called reality shows and yet can still name every Kardashian, Jenner, and what’s their face by name and possibly their dogs as well. You can’t evade them on a basic level and like a bizarre crash performance you can’t really look away.
This book carries the idea to an extreme by making the middle “problem” child the centre of its plot, only that Bentley on TV is most decidedly not Bent when the cameras aren’t rolling. At heart, she really wants to be like any other girl and has the shocking dream to go to university … unthinkable considering that Bentley, as the whole country knows, couldn’t give a flying fox about anything school related. But which is the real girl Bentley or Bent? And which version of her family will actually survive if the worst/best happens and the show is cancelled? How far is Bent willing to go to save the show in order to save her family?
Sarcasm is second nature to me so I don’t quite know, why parodies aren’t too far up on my favourite list. Nevertheless, this book had me giggle-snorting on several occasions and also kept me on my toes plot-wise. Because this is not just some poking fun at reality TV and all the absurd stuff flickering across screens on a daily basis. This is at its core a coming of age story interwoven with a cleverly crafted crime plot. I wouldn’t go so far to call it suspense, but there are definitely elements of it present.
Bentley is a very relatable character who has dreams and aspirations beyond what everyone else thinks she should want. She only has the (mis)fortune to have quite the celebrity status and in that to be cast as the uncontrollable b*tch of the family. Actually not too different from the girl born into a family of footballers who wants to take ballet lessons … just as an example.
I get how this book can put you off just by looking at it, its topic, or the horrible trailer (which I won’t link to, that’s how horrible it is). But if you can either see beyond that or pick it up anyway, you’ll find quite the interesting story between these covers.

Which book has surprised you by being much better or deeper than you initially thought based on its appearance? Share your stories and teasers in the comments!