American Fantasy by Emma Straub

I recently finished American Fantasy, and I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time afterward trying to figure out how to explain my feelings about it because the more I think back on the plot, the less convinced I am that there actually was one.

Which sounds harsher than I mean it to.

This book takes place almost entirely on a cruise ship centered around the comeback of a wildly popular boy band, which immediately sounded like the type of setup that should have been absolute catnip for me. You have nostalgia, celebrity culture, obsessive fandoms, people trapped together on a floating hotel in the middle of the ocean, and the emotional instability that naturally comes from forcing thousands of people into buffet lines for several days straight.

The ingredients were all there.

And to the book’s credit, I actually thought the setting itself was very well done. I’ve never personally been on a cruise, but the descriptions were detailed enough that I could fully picture the environment and understand the strange little ecosystem the characters were existing within. There’s a manufactured excitement and forced fun that cruise culture seems to thrive on, and I thought the book captured that atmosphere really effectively.

At times, it almost felt claustrophobic in a good way.

My biggest issue, though, was that despite the story revolving around the comeback of this massive boy band, I never truly felt the excitement surrounding them. The book kept telling me that fans were losing their minds, that this comeback was huge, that these band members had this magnetic influence over people, but emotionally, I never really bought into it.

Which is strange because books about fandom and celebrity obsession usually work best when they make the audience understand why everyone is so invested.

Instead, it felt like the excitement existed mostly because the book repeatedly informed me that it did.

The band members themselves also felt surprisingly underdeveloped considering they’re such a central part of the story. Each one seemed to have a defining personality trait or role within the group, but none of them ever evolved much beyond that surface-level identity. It almost felt less like reading about fully realized people and more like reading descriptions of character archetypes.

There’s “the serious one.” “The troubled one.” “The charming one.”

You get the idea.

And because of that, I kept waiting for the story to dig deeper into their dynamics, histories, resentments, or secrets in a way that never fully happened.

Honestly, the entire reading experience became me continuously waiting for something bigger to happen.

Not necessarily a murder or some giant twist, but just… something. Some major emotional revelation. Some explosive conflict. Some deeper exploration of fame, nostalgia, parasocial relationships, aging celebrity culture, or literally anything that would elevate the story beyond people mostly wandering around a cruise ship reacting to things.

And the frustrating part is that the book hints at larger storylines multiple times. There are threads introduced that feel important, emotionally charged, or potentially explosive, but several of them either aren’t fully explored or don’t really go anywhere substantial by the end.

That left me with this strange feeling afterward where I wasn’t bored exactly, but I also wasn’t satisfied.

It’s one of those books where if someone asked me to summarize the plot a week from now, I think I would struggle to explain what the actual central conflict was supposed to be. There are moments and interactions I remember, but the overall narrative itself feels oddly blurry in hindsight.

Which is disappointing because the premise had so much potential.

A cruise ship boy band reunion should practically come with built-in drama. Give me emotional meltdowns. Give me washed up celebrity chaos. Give me fan wars in the buffet line. Give me at least one deeply unwell former teen idol throwing a margarita at someone near the shuffleboard court.

That said, I do think there are readers who will connect with this more than I did, especially people who enjoy character-driven stories that focus more on atmosphere and interpersonal interactions than heavy plot momentum. For me personally, though, I just kept waiting for the story to fully become what I thought it was building toward, and unfortunately, it never quite got there.