RECENZIE SCRISĂ DE GABRIELA POP PENTRU BLOGUL OKIAN. ‘Girl Online’ is the debut novel of Zoe Sugg, Internet celebrity known as Youtube star Zoella. Zoe launched herself as a beauty vlogger and blogger, then moving to daily vlogging and is now a best selling author of ‘Girl Online’ and ‘Girl Online on tour’. The first installment in the (currently) duology follows Penny, a teenager from Brighton with a passion for taking photos and writing blog posts. Suffering from quite severe anxiety manifested in panic attacks, Penny’s one real escape is her blog that, somehow, happens to make her an anonymous online sensation. Penny’s life goes through some changes once she goes to NYC with her parents and best friend and things are starting to look differently for her. There was quite the scandal surrounding this book for a while, as it appears to have been ghost-written. I’ll try to stay away from that, as it’s not exactly relevant to the actual review, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Mainly because I do know some people who were bothered by the whole thing and didn’t want to read the book because of this; so it’s totally a matter of personal preference, but I thought it was important to give all the facts. All things considered, this was a fast, fluffy read - your usual adorable popular fiction that isn’t life changing in any way, nor is it an outstanding piece of literature, but it’s decent and enjoyable and cute. As one of my friends pointed out, it does often feel like the book was written by a twelve year old, which, I have to agree, is pretty true. At times, Penny can feel incredibly immature and the writing style itself feels quite simplistic, but it wasn’t bad enough not to be enjoyable or ruin the experience of reading the book. Penny, as a character, didn’t quite go into either extreme as far as I was concerned. She wasn’t the best, but she wasn’t the worst either, she just gravitated in that middle instead. She was decent, she could become more likeable at times, but she also got a little on my nerves. The romance felt a bit rushed as far as I was concerned, as well as quite unlikely and not very realistic. But hey, at the end of the day, isn’t that what this kind of fiction is all about ? The thing that really did bother me about it, though, was that they used it to completely romanticized anxiety and panic attacks in one specific scene and it also looked like Penny’s anxiety had just vanished as soon as she was happy and in love (which, again, weird, considering the two only knew each other for such a brief period of time). I find this to be a terrible representation of mental illness, which comes as a bit of a shock and disappointment coming from Zoe, as she herself is known to suffer from anxiety manifested with panic attacks. The family bonds and their representation in the book felt a bit off at times, but they were mainly incredibly nice and heart warming. What was perhaps the nicest aspect of it was how Penny’s best friend was portrayed as an actual part of their family and how they all treated him as such. That was incredible and he as a character was just a delight (he did remind me quite a bit of Tyler Oakley as well, so maybe Zoe used her own friend as inspiration). Again, all things considered, I’d suggest picking up the book if it sounds like something you would enjoy, just don’t go into it with incredibly high expectations. That’s all the advice I can give.