Autor: Zoe Sugg, Siobhan Curham
Title: Girl Online
Published: 25th November 2014
Pages: 352
Price: £12.99
Publisher: Penguin Books
Rate: 2 out of 5
There are no spoilers in this review, because literally nothing happens. Maybe at the end, there's a little twist and I'm not going to steal that moment away from you when you seriously just go 'what' and read on with a straight face.
This book should have come with a trigger warning: Cringe worthy situations, immature problems with immature solutions and laughable situations that are taken super seriously. Also, not going to go with the fact that this book is probably ghost-written. Many reviews have dealt with that and I shan't copy them. I'm just simply going to say why I didn't like the book.
Let's start with the outside of the book and one of the few positive things. Oh my stars, have you seen the cover? * insert a face with its mouth open wide * Fairy lights, baby blue colour, fancy font and pretty photos evoke the image of a perfect room in which every teenage girl would like to live. When it comes to this book, though, I think the pretty cover is just trying to make up for the pile of crap that you're going to find when you open it. I hope I just created a nice image inside your mind.
Penny is a fifteen year old - wait, almost sixteen, sorry, my bad, she likes to point that out a lot - from Brighton in England. She's got a nice accent that everyone likes and everyone makes sure to point it out and she hates it there, even though she has got absolutely no reason to hate anything, because her life is perfect. She doesn't have to face poverty, she is not homeless, and she can go to school. No, seriously, her parents are fun to be around and they both have fancy jobs that involve organising weddings, her brother is super nice, she has got an amazing and quirky gay friend and a famous blog with a few thousand faithful and supportive followers that are always there for her. (Please, try not to cringe at this point). Now, let's move onto the flaws of Penny's life. Literally two things. Penny is clumsy. If this is meant to be a flaw, then I'm the most flawed human on Earth, but I just had to list it, because it's one of the things that aren’t perfect. And she gets panic attacks. I'll get to those later. But that's it. Those are the only problems regarding Penny that I've found that weren't perfect. Now, let's look at the plot * takes a magnifying glass so that she can see it * Alright, so, Penny isn't best friends with her best friend anymore. She tries dating a guy, but embarrasses herself and then embarrasses herself completely during a school play. Eventually, she takes off to the US to organise a wedding with her parents. Meets a perfect boy, further referred to as Soul mate in my review. But Soul mate has got a secret he hasn't told her. Gasp. And it basically ruins her life. Metaphorically speaking, because when you think about it, the situation that emerges at the end of the book actually isn't as tragic as it may seem.
When I dived into the book, I quickly found out that it was probably meant for younger readers than me. Which I accept. Still, the quality shouldn't decrease, because I don't think that teens under fifteen are childish or stupid and they wouldn't be able to handle more real life problems. It was a super light read that still took me four days to finish. Way too many for a book with 350 pages, big letters and margins so wide you could doodle on them. Not to mention that I'm just sitting at home on my butt with nothing useful to do. (That's why I've read the book, ha) As heavy ready as it gets, you will probably get a headache. Been there. There are too many flimsy problems in this book, problems that I often see on Twitter that I've often got connected with 15 year olds who see everything as a depressing issue. Literally, Penny's contemplating what she should add at the end of her text so she could reply to her crush was painful to read. If she were next to me, I would probably shove her iPhone down her throat, because it would've been easier if she opened her window and shouted her message at the guy across the town. Next cringe worthy moments includes dating, fake-looking comments on Penny's blog and her imagination that her embarrassment is the worst thing in the world. Besides, she is also a bit -erm- slow. Who asks if it's cold in Norway? I had to read that sentence three times to make sure I really understood. Last time I checked, Norway was in the North and yes, it does get cold there * a friendly pat *. Not to mention her abrupt decisions. What I liked about her though was her passion for photography. I wish there were more relatable themes in this book for me, but although I've shared some personality traits with Penny, hers seemed so unreal I just couldn't. Her photography passion seemed nice however, since it really seemed like she liked it. What I minded though were the constant compliments from people around her that were really suck-up-esque. Or maybe it was jealousy, because I don't get so many * pulls face *
I started on four stars when I've read it. Then it popped to three stars very quickly and I ended up deciding between one and two in the end. The only reason why it didn't end up on my one star shelf is that it's dealing with panic attacks, which is good, I guess? It raises awareness, especially amongst young girls. What I don't like though, is that no one really takes action to treat them in the book. Penny does not get any medical help and I don't think that's correct. Besides, it's not even anxiety in her case, its post-traumatic stress disorder. But I still thought it was quite promising that they've at least brought up a serious issue from the real world. It also brings us to another actual problem and that is bullying, especially cyber-bullying. That issue is very frequent and very damaging and although it wasn't – in my opinion (I've seen worse) too bad, it's good that it's been made visible in this novel.
Brace yourself, more moaning is coming. Imagine someone you know is pointing to a carrot with the words 'this is a'. Take a guess what he's going to say. This is how predictable the book is. Sometimes you have to fake surprise to at least laugh at yourself so you're not bored. That one scene where Soul mate is trying to get Penny to look out of the window via text and she keeps asking why, I just kept going 'it's snowing', 'because it's probably snowing', 'hey let me guess it's snow' inside my head. Penny then looked out of the window and melted at the snow outside. I would never expect this in my whole life. Wow. Another thing that annoyed me was the improbability of the story. It seemed like a really bad chick flick film that people go to so that they don't have to watch and can just make out at the back of the cinema. And one last thing – getting 5,432 followers basically overnight is bullpoop. Especially if your posts aren't interesting. And Penny's posts about her perfect life certainly aren't.
I had to take a few Ibuprofens to finish this book, but my utter disappointment has been comforted with this one little thought. At least it's going to look nice in my bookcase. Because the cover really makes up for the content. It looks pretty.
About the sequel, though, kill it with fire before it hatches eggs.