Book Review: Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

Graphic created by me! My first graphic for this blog, yay! 🙂

Yay! I’m back with another book review, hehe. I’m always trying to improve in my reviews, so as I write more and more of them, I hope that you’ll see that improvement as well. Anyway, let’s get started, shall we? 🙂

Four stars! ☺️

I read this entire 389-page book almost in one sitting, and overall, I enjoyed it a lot. However, I couldn’t bring myself to give it 5 stars because I did have a few issues.

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

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.

My Thoughts

“I’m so tired. I’m tired of anxiety that twists my stomach so hard I can’t move the rest of my body. Tired of constant vigilance. Tired of wanting to do something about myself, but always taking easy way out.”

This quote really resonated with me when I read Eliza and Her Monsters. I could really relate to Eliza’s anxiety and her feeling of never being good enough for other people. I think that part of the reason why I enjoyed this book was because of how much I was able to connect with Eliza. This book tackled issues like anxiety and suicide really well and I felt so many emotions from Eliza and Wallace’s stories. I really liked Zappia’s writing in this book (since I was able to read this in almost one sitting haha); I think it flowed pretty well. And Eliza and Wallace’s relationship was really cute and sweet, but I wasn’t really able to connect to Wallace, and I’m not sure why.

I really liked how Eliza and Her Monsters portrayed the love and joy of having Internet friends. Max and Emmy were so important to Eliza, and for a time, they were her only friends. Online friends can be one of the most important people in your life; just because you haven’t met them in real life doesn’t mean they’re not real friends.  I was glad that Zappia showed that in Eliza’s friendship with Max and Emmy, because I treasure my online friends a lot too. 🙂

One aspect of the book that I disliked was Eliza’s relationship with her parents. Although I sympathized with Eliza at first (because I could understand how annoying parents can be in terms of the Internet and Internet friends), I didn’t like how she brushed off her parents all the time, when they were only trying to understand and help her. I understand that Eliza felt like her parents were overbearing and just did not understand her love for her webcomic, Monstrous Sea, but she also did not try to help them understand. (Mini spoiler: In the end, it was her brothers (not Eliza herself) who finally helped their parents understand the extent of the success of Monstrous Sea.)

Overall, I really liked Eliza and Her Monsters. I love the premise of this book; I really loved reading about a webcomic artist and her fandom. I loved the artwork in this book; it was beautiful and really complemented my reading. However, I didn’t really like the blurbs of Monstrous Sea that came up every few chapters since I wasn’t able to understand the full story of Monstrous Sea. They felt choppy and I’m sad to admit that I mostly skimmed or skipped the Monstrous Sea chapters.

I’ve heard that Eliza and Her Monsters has a similar plot to Geekerella by Ashley Poston and Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, both of which I haven’t read (but may check out in the future)! If you like books about fandoms, webcomics, and nerdy culture (if that’s even a thing lol), I highly recommend this book! 💚

Thank you so much for reading this review of Eliza and Her Monsters! If you read this far, honestly, thank you so much haha. I feel like this review wasn’t the best and it was kind of all over the place, whoops. (Sorry! I’ll try to be better in my next book review.)

Have you read Eliza and Her Monsters? If so, what did you think of it? Did you enjoy it? And have you read Geekerella or Fangirl; if so, what did you think of them? Do you think I should read them?

Feel free to drop your book recommendations in the comments; I’m always down for new books to check out! (Although my TBR is a never-ending list now, whoops. But whatever. Haha.) 

 

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