Jun 5

Jun 5 Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous

Best Audiobooks, 2021 Best, Diverse Reads, Fiction, Five Star Books, Young Adult

Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire and Dreamscape Media for gifting me review copies of Sunny Song Will Never Be Famous by Suzanne Park.

I loved this book so much. It had drama, love, relationships, personal growth and challenges, social media contests, and farm animals. What more could you want from a book?

Sunny is in high school, and in between classes and after school she’s been busily building a social media empire. But when she accidentally keeps filming after a live cooking video, and it unexpectedly goes viral, her school principal and her parents decide the best thing for her is to be shipped off to a digital detox camp for the summer. Sunny is devastated to have her summer plans ruined, especially when she’s in the running to win a prestigious social media contest and needs to keep creating content!

The camp does help Sunny realize what’s really important to her though, and gives her the push she needs to think about what she wants for her future. It’s definitely not smooth sailing though, and there is plenty of drama along the way.

I will say, after being hyper-connected online for the last year, of full days of zoom meetings, and more time than ever on social media, a digital detox camp sounds like heaven. In fact, one of the best vacations I’ve ever taken was when my now-husband and I stayed for a week on a lavender farm in Victoria, Australia. There was no phone, TV, or cell reception and it was the most relaxed I think I’ve ever been!

Phone and social media addiction is a very real issue these days, and this book highlighted those dangers in a really heart-warming and fun way. I loved Sunny, she was such a beautiful character. She didn’t always make the best choices, but she was kind, loyal, and thoughtful when it came down to it.

I did a combo of reading and listening to this story on audiobook and once I started I found I just couldn’t put it down and so I binged it in one sitting. The audiobook was beautifully narrated by Joy Osmanski and comes in at just over eight hours long. You can download the audiobook here, or grab a digital or physical copy via the button below.

Get the Book

Synopsis:

A social media influencer is shipped off to a digital detox summer camp in this funny coming-of-age story, perfect for fans of Jenny Han's The Summer I Turned Pretty and Love and Gelato .

Sunny Song's Big Summer Goals:
1) Make Rafael Kim my boyfriend (finally!)
2) Hit 100K followers (almost there…)
3) Have the best last summer of high school ever

Not on Sunny's list: accidentally filming a PG-13 cooking video that goes viral (#browniegate). Extremely not on her list: being shipped off to a digital detox farm camp in Iowa (IOWA??) for a whole month. She's traded in her WiFi connection for a butter churn, and if she wants any shot at growing her social media platform this summer, she'll need to find a way back online.

But between some unexpected friendships and an alarmingly cute farm boy, Sunny might be surprised by the connections she makes when she's forced to disconnect.