Review: Bit Players, Has-Been Actors And Other Posers by S.M. Stevens

Bit Players, Has-Been Actors And Other Posers by S.M. Stevens
Publisher: CreateSpace
Release Date: November 3, 2011
Book Format: Paperback
# of Pages: 230
Synopsis: Finally, a novel for teen lovers of musical theatre and show choir! Bit Players, Has-Been Actors and Other Posers takes you deep into the heart of a high school drama program, with its creativity, camaraderie, politics and, well, drama. Join Sadie Perkins in her quest for a lead role, as the Crudup High School drama club makes its own musical out of Twilight. Intrigue abounds. Why does Sadie’s rival Lucey really get the role of Bella? What’s behind foreign exchange student Nigel’s interest in high school theatre? And where does the show’s director, Mr. Ellison, disappear to three days before opening night? With everything falling apart, can the cast even pull off the show?


Meet The Author,  (Taken from Goodreads)

S.M. Stevens, author of the Bit Players book series for teen and young adult musical theatre-lovers, wanted to be a star, but didn’t have the lack of inhibition or abundance of self-confidence to make it to the top (of her high school drama program). Like Sadie in Bit Players, she wowed the directors at the audition of her high school play, only to lose the lead and find out later it was promised to a friend of hers in advance of auditions. Stardom slipped from her grasp while the unfairness of high school life was confirmed again.

She worked for three summers following high school in a university–based theatre program, as a “clown” in Stop The World, I Want to Get Off!; as Ensemble/Maid in My Fair Lady, and in the lighting booth for The Music Man. She also worked stage crew and in various front-of-house jobs including Box Office Manager at her college.

In all of these settings, she discovered the true miracle of musical theatre: the highs, the lows, the hard-to-describe bonding with your cast mates and crew, and that special something that makes performing in a show different from any other experience life has to offer.

She hopes Bit Players – the book and the blog — will bring you into this world in an entertaining and thought-provoking way. If you’ve never been in a show, read the book and get the buzz that way; if you have done shows, you’ll know what Sadie is talking about and thinking and feeling.

My Review:

I received Bit Players, Has-Been Actors And Other Posers by S.M. Stevens for review, and these are my honest thoughts.

I agreed to take on this trilogy for a few reasons. The main one being, for some reason I love books that take place in the high school setting. I am not sure why, I just love seeing how everything unfolds. The drama, whose friends with whom, the cliques, the bullies, etc. It all fits together to make for a great book. Also! I love reading about plays. I do not love reading plays that much but I love reading books that have characters in plays.

The first characters introduced are of course the main character Sadie who loves to be on stage, and the play we read about in this first book is her chance to finally be the lead. We also meet Alex, who is Sadie’s best friend in the beginning. The two have a pretty rough falling out mid way through the book which made for some crazy drama that sort of turned me off to both of them to be completely honest. Throughout the rest of the book, they gained my likings back through many things though so I am happy with that.

I like Alex even though he did do some things to piss me off, granted some of those things were deserved but still mean nonetheless. I love that he has basically turned into a popular, and is still trying to be best friends with Sadie despite how hard she is trying to push him and his new life away from her. We then meet the foreign exchange student Nigel. Normally everybody dies over foreign exchange students, but me on the other hand? Unless they are really nice and deserve attention I do not really care for them. Nigel proved to me yet again why I feel this way about foreign exchange students in books!

I have a love hate relationship with the suspense that occurred in the barn near the end of the book. I liked that Stevens incorporated it because the way it all happened was really cool. But at the same time I feel like Lord finally going rogue, and everything that happened was really rushed, and squeezed into one or two chapters. After the barn incident we only hear about a sentence worth of whatever happened to Lord. Which, granted is all he deserves but I would have liked to see something leading up to the mysterious texts Sadie gets, and then something more explaining what happened to Lord.

Overall, I loved the idea for the play. Twilight was such a big thing back when this book was published in 2011 so I liked that Stevens instead of deciding to write something about vampires chose to incorporate something so popular into her book extensively without having to make it a vampire book completely. I give her props and will be for sure reading the next two books in the series!

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you liked my review :)