Florence Given - Girl Crush
3.5⭐
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, LGBTQIA+
Pages: 384
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Brazen, Octopus Publishing Group
Date Published: 16th August 2022
Thank you to Tandem Collective UK and Brazen Books for sending me a copy of this book and inviting me to be a part of the #GirlCrush #TandemReadalong.
Book Blurb:
In Given's debut novel, we follow Eartha on a wild, weird and seductive modern-day exploration as she commences life as an openly bisexual woman whilst also becoming a viral sensation on Wonder Land, a social media app where people project their dream selves online.
But as her online self and her offline self become more and more distanced, trauma from her past comes back to haunt and destroy her present.
Eartha must make a choice: which version of herself should she kill off?
My Review:
I have so many mixed emotions
regarding this book. I really liked some aspects of it, especially the deeper
look into how social media can affect us all both, negatively and positively.
However, there were some things I found really problematic with this story,
such as the very damaging queer stereotyping, as well as feminist comments that
are very superficial and at times hypocritical. I definitely believe that this book
had so much potential, but most of it did not shine through. This story really
wanted to highlight a lot of current societal issues but ended up lacking
depth, storyline and takeaway messages.
The book follows Eartha, who
hates being in a monotonous relationship where she feels like she is a
full-time mum to a grown-up adult, a.k.a. her boyfriend. After her boyfriend
cheats on her, she decides to dump him but soon after ends up drunkenly posting
a video online talking about her relationship, how she now hates men and
eventually comes out as bisexual. Her video on the most popular social media
platform Wonderland goes viral and over one day she becomes a rising social
media star. Being a viral sensation whilst also navigating her bisexuality
becomes quite a challenge to Eartha, and whilst her online persona is living a
dream, her offline life is slowly crumbling down. Will Eartha find a balance
between both worlds or Wonderland will end up consuming her entirely?
Honestly, when I started this
book, I thought that it is going to be so good. I really enjoyed the start of
it, especially when Eartha stood up for herself and dumped her cheating
boyfriend, who in reality did not respect her at all. He was very manipulative
and psychologically abusive and had the decency to cheat on her. So, it was
rather empowering when she stood up for herself.
However, what happened after that
is the book went downhill. Instead of picking one theme and exploring it in depth,
Given crammed all the possible themes and subjects into this one storyline…Online
online abuse, social media, mental health, sexuality, and feminism all were crammed
into Eartha’s life. It made me feel that the plot of this book is all
over the place and in the end, it is hard to know what this book was actually
all about. I think if Given chose to
explore one of the arcs in-depth, either the social media arc and what it's like
to be a famous feminist on social media, especially shining the light on mental
health and effects of online abuse or the arc of Eartha exploring her
queerness and navigating her sexuality, it would have made this book so much
better. That and the book could have been turned into a two-part book or a
duology about Eartha.
Apart from this book being all
over the place and having loads of negative and unhealthy stereotypes of
bisexuals and feminists, there were some positives about this book. For me, the
Wonderland social media platform felt really like Black Mirror’s Nosedive
episode, especially during the parts where Eartha describes people living their
lives and spending their every minute there, whilst posting perfect versions of
their lives on it but forgetting to actually live their life. It really made me
think about our obsession and addiction to social media and displaying perfect pictures
with perfect versions of ourselves. It also was interesting to see how much
power social media and strangers on that social media can have an effect on us.
That is, it is not a physical space but it can make us sad, angry, lonely, happy, and jealous, which in turn can both negatively and positively affect our mental
health and well-being.
Overall: This book had so much
potential and it started off so great but quickly went downhill for me. It
seemed that the author wanted to squeeze too much into one book and it simply
didn’t work out. There was so much going on and yet there was very little
character growth or lessons to be learned from this book. I felt that Eartha as
a character just stagnated during this book. Additionally, I felt that other characters
weren’t developed fully, too. Also, I found that some parts of this book were
very problematic, thus I would recommend checking trigger warnings before
reading this book.
About the Author:
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