Published: 30th May 2017
Source: Bought
Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult, Romance
My Rating:
Her story is a phenomenon. Her life is a disaster.
In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless. Online, she’s LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves the online one, and she has no desire to try.
Then Wallace Warland, Monstrous Sea’s biggest fanfiction writer, transfers to her school. Wallace thinks Eliza is just another fan, and as he draws her out of her shell, she begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile.
But when Eliza’s secret is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart.
Eliza and her Monsters was a book I was so excited for when I learnt what it was about. I had been waiting ages for it to be released and I saw the reviews roll in and new it was a perfect book for me. I bought it a few months ago and then for no apparent reason allowed it to gather dust on my shelf and didn’t pick it up. I then did the same after reviewing. I knew I wanted to tell you all about it but couldn’t figure out how and once more my review gathered digital dust. Finally, I am ready to put into good words what makes this book great.
This book is another which focuses heavily on the community people can find online and the joy of being part of online fandom. It takes a different angle to it than Fangirl or Geekerella did but at it’s heart this book is about fandom and about fitting in and I loved it for that alone. Eliza created her very own fandom by creating a webcomic. Sharing her work online and somehow creating a huge community which adores the work she does. Her family and those in her everyday life aren’t fully aware of what she does but there are those online who adore what she does and she has those who care for her online, friends, something she doesn’t have in her real life, especially not at school.
Eliza is drifting through her senior year counting down until she graduates and she can go to college, where she is told it is better. That is until she meets Wallace Warland, a new kid at her school who likes the webcomic she writes and who in fact is part of that fandom, one of the best fanfic writers for it in fact. She struggles with telling him because how do you even tell someone like that? Along with the struggle of revealing who she is to her new friend she is struggling with her own social anxiety as she comes out of her shell.
I won’t reveal more about the story but it’s safe to say that it was done so brilliantly. I related so well with Eliza. Whilst the internet wasn’t as good as it was now as a teen I spent a ridiculous amount online, I still do. It reminded me a lot of Fngirl, like I said, and writing this review is making me want to reread Fangirl, but this is a little different and it explores different things but the comparisons are easy to make. I didn’t have Eliza’s struggles of her parents not understanding her, though. I did get dragged away from my computer but that was more because dial up was a thing and someone needed to use the phone. Or because I was on the family computer for five hours and my brother needed to do his homework. They never forced me to be something I wasn’t.
Whilst there is a romance in this book, I found really it’s more about Eliza discovering who she was and what she wanted in life. And also learning to let others in around her. Eliza believes that people expect certain things from her and she terrified of not meeting expectations. She puts so much pressure on herself which is totally unnecessary and throughout the book it is about her growing and learning her own limits and defining her own limits. This is a brilliant book about anxiety and the affect it can have. It is about learning your limits and admitting help is needed. It is beautiful and wonderful and absolutely one of my favourites.
I will never be objective about this book because it was just utterly perfect to me but I loved it and I don't know why more people haven't spoken about it. How has this not been everywhere or am I just out of touch with YA?
Have you read this? Did you love it as much as me? And can you recommend any good books like this one which you totally connect with?
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