Eliza and Her Monsters

This past Tuesday, Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia was released into the world, and you all need to get a copy. Now.I was an Eliza beta reader about a year and a half ago, and I finished reading my hardback yesterday. All the praise that I had already given the beta version? Oh, wow. Magnify that by a hundred. This book is fantastic. Here are my 5 reasons for why you need NEED to read it.1) Fantastic Characters--It's a well known fact that Chessie makes amazing, multi-layered characters, the type to delight fans of all ages (cc: Made You Up). Her characters feel flesh and blood. They make you want to cry and scream, and you get frustrated on their behalf. Chessie's attention to detail makes her characters come alive, with their own little habits and phrases. And with such fantastic characters, you're guaranteed to be engaged in the story, even if you don't always agree with what the characters do.2) Breaking Gender Norms--The romantic interest in this book is a hulk, former football player and now fanfiction writer and a selective mute, with a soft voice. The main character is a girl with greasy hair and social anxiety, and she's this super popular creator of a webcomic. Society tends to portray female creators as being Nice, Polite Women - women need to comprise, to smile more often, etc. Here, we have another story to rival that. And many of the side characters also break gender norms. I don't know about you, but I'm very pleased to have a story where the characters aren't in these flat cardboard boxes of what we expect (e.g., alpha male). This also makes the characters feel more real to me.3) The Unique Formatting--You can look at several of the Goodreads reviews that mention the photos - here, for instance. Or just at look at the EpicReads post of the first two chapters. You can see the inclusion of the Monstrous Sea webcomic pages, and the prose transcription beneath. You can see private messages between the characters - the moderators of the webcomic and Eliza, the romantic interest and Eliza. You can see forum interactions and forum profiles. Most of the YA books out right now don't have this amount of layering within their stories. Horror YA sometimes includes pictures, and other fandom related books might have some stories, some fanfiction--not to this extent, not to this level of metaness. See point below.4) Unlike Anything Else You've Read--This book has been compared to Fangirl and Afterworlds and Nimona, because every book needs to be compared to something, so you have an idea of its marketing. It's a fact of life that you build on schemas that people already have of the world. But this book is unlike anything else that you've read. You only get Cath's fanfiction in Fangirl, some of the story from the main character in Afterworlds. Nimona started off as a comic. None of these is quite the same as Eliza and Her Monsters. Here, you get the main character's creation and see how she interacts with her fans, and you see how fanfic writers interact with the creator and the fandom. You also get to hear about a series of books that she loves, too. Chessie has posted this online - the Children of Hypnos story. The main character has a drive to create after the fandom that she loves no longer exists. You have access to that story too. There's this amazing level of metaness in this story that ties so well into the themes of creation, fandoms, etc. I repeat: unlike anything else you've read.5) So Easy to Relate to--If you're reading this book, there is a good likelihood that you will relate to SOMETHING in this book. Whether it's the main character's social anxiety, the need to create, the desire to interact with the fandom, or just loving how the fandom interacts-- there is something for everyone. And you know that Chessie has interacted with or been a part of fandoms, because it shows in her writing. It shows in how fandoms a portrayed. Marieke Nijkamp wrote the blurb, "A love letter to fandom, friendship, and the stories that shape us, Eliza and Her Monsters is absolutely magical." Yes, yes, yes. A love letter to fandom and friendship and stories. Yes. 100% true.READ THIS BOOK!PS - This wonderful novel got a starred review from Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, and School Library Journal.PPS - Here is my original pre-review: I read a manuscript of this book about one year ago to date. If you like Made You Up, you will most certainly love Eliza! Chessie brings back her trademark endearing humor in another wonderful mix of adorable romance, quirky characters, and multilayered plotting (plus the cool formatting here, which is typically reserved for YA horror, but hey, Eliza is just that awesome). I would also recommend this book to fans of Fangirl and Afterworlds.

I went into this book expecting greatness, honestly. A book about fandoms, anxiety, and being a child of the internet? You already know I can get behind all of that. Plus, a romance that forms through written correspondence? MY LITERAL FAVORITE TROPE? Sign me up! … Unfortunately, though, Eliza wasn’t quite everything I hoped it would be.“I made Monstrous Sea because it's the story I wanted. I wanted a story like it, and I couldn't find one, so I created it myself.”→ Eliza Mirk ←Eliza herself was the reason this was a 3.5-star read for me instead of a 5-star one. Literally, every single problem I had with this book? Eliza. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not unredeemable – she portrays fantastic anxiety rep that I related really well to, and her affinity for the webcomic she has created and its subsequent fandom reaches levels of love that I think a lot of us can understand. She’s immensely talented and a perfectionist to the point that she feels like she needs to work on her creations constantly, which is also a feeling I can get behind (hello, type A personalities!).“Broken people don't hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.”→ miscommunications & angst ←I don’t want anyone thinking I’m over here holding teen characters to unfair standards. I genuinely don’t mind when YA protagonists get irrationally angry at their families, or don’t want to spend time with their siblings, or lash out at friends and love interests… usually. Eliza, unfortunately, takes it to a new level.Her parents are a little bit inept and don’t have great communication, but it felt like the portrayal of their relationship was, in a sense, saying, “It’s okay to treat your parents like trash no matter how hard they try, because even if they try to understand you, they’re never going to!” We’ve all seen bad parents in YA, but the Mirks aren’t. They mess up, and they’re human, but they’re trying, and the biggest issue is, hands down, a lack of communication. While Eliza’s behavior is perfectly common for teens – especially those struggling with mental health issues – it doesn’t feel like it’s addressed or correctly quickly or well enough to justify its intensity.“You found me in a constellation.”→ Wallace Warland ←The brightest spot in this book? Wallace, hands down. He’s the sort of character that you peg as the love interest from the moment he walks on to the page, but it’s hard to guess that he could be so adorable and wounded. He struggles from tremendous amounts of grief, as well as PTSD, and it manifests through his inability to speak out loud around most people (which is where the “written correspondence” trope gets its chance to shine). He is caring, kind, and so lovable, and honestly deserved better than some of the mess that Eliza put him through.There is a scene towards the end of the book – I won’t spoil it, but if you’ve read it, you know the one – where Eliza gives Wallace a terrible scare, and his reaction had me unexpectedly sobbing because he is so desperately afraid of his past repeating itself before his eyes. He was easily the character that I connected the most to, emotionally, and by the time I turned the final page, I just wanted so much more time with him.“Maybe that’s normal. The things you care most about are the ones that leave the biggest holes.”→ Monstrous Sea ←One of the things I found most interesting about the book, I have to mention here: the art and snippets from Eliza’s webcomic, Monstrous Sea, that we get to see here and there throughout the story. The art was so fun, and it was a really nice touch that made the webcomic feel like a real-life thing – I half-expected that I would be able to go to the URLs listed and find a full, thriving forum there for a fandom I’d never known existed. The storyline snippets, on the other hand, I thought were a little dull, and didn’t form a cohesive enough mini-story to bother with trying to follow closely, but I’m happy I got the physical formatting for the illustrations alone.→ final thoughts ←At the end of the day, I gave this book 3.5 stars, but rounded up to 4 for the star rating's sake. If you enjoy books that reference internet fandoms and online friends, as well as some really solid anxiety rep, I highly recommend this book, unless you have a problem with angsty, self-absorbed main characters. If you think that’s a feature that you’d find yourself unable to get past, as I know is the case for many people, I’d pass on this one.