Thalia @ Pictures in the Words

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to like this book. The online format threw me for a loop when I first began reading, but I was suddenly and swiftly caught up in the life of Jane and her online world. I related incredibly well to what Jane goes through—I use a fake name online, and while everything else I tell people is 100% true, the idea of empowerment through a new name and being able to be everything you wish you could be in real life—I totally get that. Like Jane, I’m surprisingly shy, and nobody who has met me online would ever begin to guess that, and I just understood where she was coming from so well. When I was fifteen, I think my life in fandom was much like hers—immersed completely, because it was much easier than dealing with the real world, especially the terror of making friends with people who can see you.

The storyline is incredibly relevant to today’s teenagers, and that doesn’t begin to cover the (literally) laugh-out-loud humor and realistic message. I would be reading and actually laughing—rather loudly, sometimes—and it was just so…believable. Jane takes you on an incredible roller coaster ride—I felt like I almost got whiplash reading between her thoughts! Unfortunately, Jane herself wasn’t as likable as I would have hoped, and there was an incredibly insensitive approach taken to a serious subject, but those were the only flaws this book had. I honestly loved every single other moment. This is a brilliant debut from Kelly Hourihan, full of life and laughter and a little bit of what it means to grow up.

What I Liked: Spoilers!

• This book is such an accurate picture of teenagers who use the internet. I mean, just by going on certain sites, you can see that there are thousands to millions of people who are invested in “fandom” of some sort, but when you look at the people around you in school and stuff, the number of people who understand you seems far fewer. I kept most of my interests and feelings about things to myself because I found myself far more emotionally invested in things than other people I knew, and that was kind of embarrassing. So, so many people could relate to what Jane goes through. She writes fanfiction, she mostly has friends online, she hides behind a fake name (and personality), she can be herself online, and she feels like she has to hide all if it in real life because people will think she’s weird. I don’t know about anyone else, but that’s exactly what I was like when I was fifteen. And heck, that’s still how I am a lot of the time. It uses all the current lingo (which will be, unfortunately, obsolete in ten years, which is the problem with books like this) and it’s relatable for so many people. It shows readers that they’re not weird for being into a fandom (or many) or writing fanfiction or having friends online. And I think that’s an incredibly important message to send to kids. It could make a lot of people feel a lot less lonely.

• This book was so ridiculously funny. It’s like Hourihan really is a fifteen-year-old girl who decided to just save her chats and messages and online journal entries. Everything skips around—just like a teenager’s journal probably does (highlighting only mega-highs and mega-lows, but not anything in between), and you’re interested because Jane seems like such a ball of energy that you can’t help but what to keep reading. When Jane pretended to be “Heather the slutty cheerleader” to trick the school jerk, Jason, into looking like a fool—I was laughing like an idiot. Every time she commented on one of Jason’s responses in her journal, and then just kept it up with the Heather act—it was madness. I would quote things that I found funny, but they’re only funny in full context—much like conversations we have with our friends! Another time is when Jane and her friend Audra decide to play truth or dare and the dares are only things that can be done online. Audra dares Jane to write a Look to Tomorrow (their fandom)/Twilight crossover, with an Edward/Thorin (from LtT) theme and at least one sex scene—based on songs like “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift, or “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce. And Jane types in all caps her disgust and that she will not do that, nor will she post it like Audra wants her to, but eventually, she gives in. Oh, and she has to do it in twenty minutes. I don’t know about anyone else, but I definitely had those kinds of truth or dare competitions with my online friends when I was into writing fanfiction. Ours were all PG-13, but the sentiment is still there. It was looking back through an album of memories that I’d had myself, and I felt so connected to Jane that it was ridiculous. And it helped that 99% of the book made you nearly pee your pants because you were laughing so hard.

What I Didn’t Like:

• Jane, unfortunately, is one of “those people” in the fandom. You know who I’m talking about. That one person in every fandom that everyone hates. The person who stalks the tag and comments on every single post they disagree with, to “enlighten” the person who originally posted, or just to “correct” something. Someone would post about a character from LtT, Jaela, saying something like, “man, what is up with jaela, she’s all over the place, why don’t the writers remember their plot for like two seconds” and Jane (as Rachel, her LtT alter ego) will reblog the post with three paragraphs about how it all makes perfect sense and they’re being “too harsh” and “they should make up their minds”. Another of Jane’s alters, Elana, is some sort of literature major, working on a thesis about a certain poet. Some poor girl has the audacity to post about why writing can help heal grief and uses Tennyson as an example—and “Elana” goes off on a tangent, pulling “examples” from Tennyson’s life and works to derail the girl’s opinion. Jane even tells her that the cite she linked isn’t relevant because it looks “hippie and New Age-y”, which evidently doesn’t have a place in a “scholarly discussion about Tennyson”.  Every time she posts “in the fandom”, she comes off as condescending and rude and like she’s all that. To me, it was no wonder nobody wanted to help with her with LtT auction, or that a lot of people were ignoring her. And the fact that Jane used proper grammar and everyone she
  “corrected” didn’t made a little angry, too—she thought too much of herself when she was playing an alter, and an incredibly inflated ego. There’s also a conversation Jane has with her one real life friend, Gary, after they try to drive to New York together. Gary is trying to talk to Jane about some stuff she said about her dad, and maybe dealing with the problems she has, but Jane just…ugh, she freaks out, curses him out, yells at him, and gets generally pissed off. And Gary just takes it all, and he’s just trying to help, and nobody ever told Jane that talking to him that way wasn’t okay. She was so reactive and had an “I’m better than you” attitude towards everyone, and I just didn’t like her.

• Audra, one of Jane’s online friends, tells Jane that she’s a cutter. She was in the hospital (a psych ward) because her mom found out and “stuck” her there. Audra is telling Jane about it, and Jane is just like, “Oh…” and Audra is basically like, “Yeah, well, I use it to deal with stress and stuff and it’s my way to deal with life, and it’s not like I want to kill myself or anything, it’s just for stress, and my mom barged in and freaked out and was being crazy and stuff, and she took me to the hospital and they actually kept me because I’m a minor and I didn’t get any say, and they were just totally overreacting.” And Jane just agrees with her. Excuse me?! Sorry, no. I can forgive Audra for seeing it that way, but we need one character to be the voice of reason. Jane needed to tap the screen and be like, “Uh, Audra? You were cutting yourself. With knives. Of course your mother freaked out, that is a totally normal reaction when your daughter is hurting herself.” Brushing off something as serious as self-harm and making it out to be a “healthy stress dealer” or a “healthy coping mechanism” is not okay. Not on any level, not in any universe. It is not okay to send the message that cutting is a healthy reaction to stress, or even normal. It’s not normal and it’s definitely not okay. People should be taught to get help if they are self-harming—not get pissed off at the people who are freaked out because of it. This whole thing really disappointed me because I felt like it was such a great books for teens to read, and this part just sends a bad message.

Overall: I really did like this book, and if it weren’t for the two things I didn’t like, I could have easily given this five stars. It was incredibly well written and very believable. It was funny and smart and engaging, and it *mostly* sends a good message to teens about how they’re not “weird” for being interested in things their classmates might not understand. A lot of kids face this problem nowadays, and it’s such a relief to see a book deal with this situation and put it in a positive light. You’ve been warned that the main character is kind of a stuck-up brat sometimes, but honestly, you barely notice. This one is definitely worth reading.

(http://thaliasbooks.tumblr.com/post/63700407313/4-to-16-characters-review)