Pleasantly surprised: Girl Online by Zoe Sugg

Hallooooo!!

Another mid week blog post for y'all :)

So, last week Monday 23th February I (finally) started reading Girl Online by Zoe Sugg. I know I know, her book came out at the end of November of last year. And believe it or not, I basically bought it the day it came out, or a day after, can't really remember.

But, at the time, I was reading the Mortal Instruments series and no way I would stop reading those books before I'd finished the entire series. As I am not the fastes reader in the world, it took me about 3 months to read the 6 TMI books. Which meant that Girl Online lay in my wardrobe for about 3 months, gathering dust.

But, Sunday evening 22nd February I read the final chapters of The Mortal Instruments: City of Heavenly Fire. So instead of giving in to the urge of rereading The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and start the whole series again, I considered one of my many other books that are waiting to be read.

Girl Online was the lucky one. So, after giving myself 24h to cope with the home sickness to the fictitious world and fictitious characters of TMI, I started reading on the train home from work.

So, what's the book about? It's a coming of age, young adult book about a 16year old blogger by the name of Penny Porter. The story discribes beautifully what a teenager has to deal with: spots, boys (or girls), changing friends and accepting yourself. But besides the classic universal teen problems every teenager ever in the entire history of humanity had to go through, she also talks about the presure teens of the '10 have to deal with: the perfect selfie, beauty 'standards' that are set all over the internet, living a picture perfect life, etc.

Penny has one funny gay best friend and is starting to out grow her best friend Megan. The later is something we've all experienced at some point in our lives. Penny is extremely clumsy, suffers from panic attacks and is also a blogger. As she feels the presure she can't be herself around the people in her life (besides her family) she starts up a blog. A little space on the internet that is 100% her. One cursial fact about the blog is that it's anonymous and she goes by the name Girl Online. When her parents take her to New York for Christmas, she meets Noah. And you probably all can tell where this is going, right? Well, Noah has a secret himself, which threatens Penny's identity on her anonymous blog. If you want to know exactly what happens and who it's ending, you'll have to read the book ;)

To be honest, I didn't expect the book to be very good. The only two reasons why it appealed to me was a) the main character is a blogger and b) it's written by Zoë Sugg.

It is Zoë's debut novel and I had my doubts about her writing skills. I do like the way she writes on her blog, but a blog is something completely different than a fictional story. Don't get me wrong, it's not badly written, but it's not on the level of Cassandra Clare, C.S Lewis or J.K. Rowling for example. I'd say it's more a Lauren Conrad style of writing. If you've read the L.A. Candy or the Fame Game series, you'll know what I'm talking about :) Although, now I come to think of it, that's exactly why I like the book. If Girl Online was written like one of the mentionned above, I think it might not have worked!  It's a super easy, light and very enjoyable read.

As for the characters: I missed some character depth. Some reactions and conversations just didn't feel natural to me and that might, in some cases, just ruin the book for me. The chapter division wasn't always as I would've done it and certain descriptions like: "I studied his face to see if he was lying" just weren't necessary for me.

But, as the story line was so sweet, it was able to grab my attention after chapter 3 and I finished the book within the week. I read every moment I could: on the train to work, during lunch time, on the train back home, before going to sleep,... I had difficulties putting the book down.

One can criticise a book as much as one likes. Too little character depth, no natural conversations or reactions, not always a smooth style of writing,... But if a book captures your attention, like Girl Online did with me, all the above doesn't matter. It's the story that counts. The ability to take the reader out of this world and into the book.

I'm living by 2 'reading rules':
1) Always read the first chapter of a book before you buy it. You'll notice immidately whether you like the writing style or not.
2) If the story doesn't grab your attention after reading the first 50pages, just call it a day. No point in proceeding.

Now, when I bought Girl Online, I didn't apply the first rule. Great mistake you might say! But then see the second reason I bought the book. That might explain it :) But rule nr 2, that was a no brainer. After chapter 3 I was off. Smiling stupidly when somehting cute happened, feeling embarrased when something extremely corny happened and that horrible feeling whilst reading the final chapters. I felt all the emotions one should feel whilst reading a good book :)

And that is my opinion on Girl Online :) Not sure whether this was remotely interesting for you, but I guess, since you're reading this, it did :)

You might also have noticed how much fun I had with taking photographs of the book x)

If you're interested, Zoe made a trip to the printers and made a video about it. I think it's pretty cool to see how a book is being made :)

Thanks for reading!
xo - Sara