by Zac D. (link)
Genre het, drama, angst
Pairings Taylor/OFC
Length 68 chapters
Status Completed
When I think about old school hanfic, I tend to assume the stories will be one of two genres — angst-filled drama or cheesy romance. I didn’t know which to expect from Nothin’ But The Best, and I ended up with something that was somehow both and neither.
Grammar is something I take very seriously, and I’m easily put off if I read a story with really horrible grammar. I pressed on with this story, though, despite some really horrible misspellings and an impressive mixture of incomplete and run-on sentences. On top of that, there was really nothing redeemable about the author’s style.
The first several chapters deal exclusively with a family of original characters; this was at least warned for on the story’s index page, but it didn’t make it any easier to stomach their over-the-top backstory. The most tortured of these characters is the young drummer named Zac — no, not that Zac — who just so happens to share his name with the author. What a coincidence. Once Hanson do come into the picture, the story isn’t any easier to stomach. Isaac is totally unrelatable and constantly focused on Hanson’s status as “teen idols,” Zac is a crazy caricature (admittedly, the real Zac was, too) and Taylor doesn’t appear to have any sort of personality.
I had hopes that all of the angsty backstory meant we wouldn’t be delving into romance territory, too. Sadly, I was wrong. At least the romance plot is less cheesy than some I’ve read, although not by much. That’s not to say that it’s handled with any sort of grace or elegance. In fact, none of the various sub-plots are, and one completely disappears with no resolution.
I wish I could say something good about this story. It isn’t a cheesy romance and it probably was fairly groundbreaking for its time. A story about another young band with very different lives from Hanson becoming entwined in Hanson’s lives, complete with drugs, teen pregnancy, and other such angsty topics — yeah, I can see how that would be a breath of fresh air in a sea of teenybopper fantasies. But the writing style, which seems to get worse as the story goes on, the overwrought backstories, the completely unrelatable characters and the ridiculous drama all make it impossible for me to recommend this story today.
Review by Bethany (website)