Review: Eliza and Her Monsters

Title: Eliza and Her Monsters 
Series: None
Author: Francesca Zappia 
Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult, Romance 
Publisher: HarperCollins 
Publication Date: May 30, 2017 
Source: Gifted! Thank you!

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. 

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Okay, so, um . . . THIS IS THE BEST EVER.  Seriously, this book is full of so much awesomeness I can barely handle it.  I mean, the main character, Eliza, was just so relatable.  She spent like, 95% of her time on the internet, interacting and talking with the friends she made there and staying comfortable and safe within her room.  Plus, this book focused so much on the process and pressure that comes with creating art, and dealt with themes of depression and anxiety so well.  I just loved everything about this book.  Read it.  

The characters in this book have made themselves very comfortable in my heart.  I just adore them all so much and love how excited and passionate they were about Monstrous Sea and their other interests.  I felt such a sense of kinship with them; like, these would be my people if I were in this world with them.  They would be the people I wanted to be friends with, who I gravitate toward.  Like I said before, Eliza was especially relatable -- she just felt so much more comfortable behind a screen, when she was creating and sharing her work anonymously.  I felt so much for her.  Even when I saw her making mistakes and even when I wanted to scream in frustrating at some of her decisions, I still got it.  I got where she was coming from.  Wallace, Eliza's love interest, was so precious and so amazing.  I loved how much he cared about Elia and how they worked together to overcome some obstacles.  Their slow growing friendship and slow burn romance was just so cute.  I love it and them.   

ALSO, I just loved Eliza's little brothers.  They were seriously such an amazing and important aspect of the story and they made me want to go hang out with my own little brother.  I love sibling relationships in novels and this one was so true and felt real.  I wish they had been features more prominently in the story.  

Oh my goodness, this review is getting long but I just have SO MUCH TO SAY.  A unique and super cool aspect of this novel was the illustrations throughout.  Obviously, Eliza's webcomic, Monstrous Sea, was such a huge part of her life.  So it was neat to see some of the illustrations and excerpts from the comics throughout the novel.  While I didn't *totally* understand the overall premise of the comic, I still appreciated the detail and skill that went into the comics.  It was a vital part of the story and the character's lives so I liked getting a peek at it.  I also liked the role it played in the main conflict in the book.  It was a unique problem and one I enjoyed reading about.  

This was my first book by this author and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  The characters were what really drew me in, but the writing style, the plot, the illustrations were all so amazing.  I read this book in a whirlwind and I can't wait to see what's next from this author.  

“How can I want something so badly but become so paralyzed every time I think about taking it?”

Five Teapots