Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
I literally hate this book with every fibre in my being. This is literally the most ridiculous portrayal of cyberbullying that I have ever had the misfortune of reading of my own two eyeballs. I literally don't even know where to begin.
First off, the writing in this is literally so ... mediocre? It literally reads like mediocre fanfiction. And full offense this author literally hasn't spoken to a teenager after 2010 and it shows. I'd feel bad for saying it but I'm getting so tired of adults who have literally no idea what the teenagers of the modern day are like and writing them as whatever stereotype they have in their head. I would've let this slide if this had been written in like 2009 but this was literally published in 2015 so like ... get with the times.
People my age don't use Facebook all that much anymore, at least they don't use it in the way that it's portrayed in the book. Nobody puts you on blast and tells you to kill yourself on a Facebook post in the year of 2015. They just don't. They'll do it on a spam account on instagram or on their snapstory but even then they'll be shady about it, they won't ever mention any names.
Which someone would know if they had ever actually spoken to someone between the ages of 13-20.
Moving on.
All of these characters are like caricatures of human beings, not to mention they're all fucking sociopaths. Everything is so exaggerated to the point that it literally wouldn't work this way in the real world.
Lara is literally so annoying and I should probably feel bad for saying this considering her situation, but she was a fucking idiot. I get where her self-esteem issues came from, seriously I do, but I feel like the way that they were handled was so poorly and it honestly didn't feel like it came from somewhere deep. Maybe it's just me but I literally do not understand why someone would give two shits about the opinion of any boy, especially one they've never met in person. I don't know what it was but her situation just didn't feel real to me.
You mean to tell me, this girl goes from being perfectly fine for weeks and months on end and enjoying life ... to attempting suicide because one boy told her the world would be a better place without her? I don't know, maybe I don't know enough about this type of thing yet to be able to judge whether or not it was realistic, maybe someone really can make a complete 360.
Her sister Sydney is literally ... so self-centered. Her sister literally tries to kill herself and this girl thinks her life is hard because she can't make it to her audition. How fucking hard it must be for you to have a mentally ill sister. Why doesn't she just put on hold so that you can have some attention for five minutes. God she was so annoying but as annoying as she was, she was also one of the only sane fucking people in this book and that wasn't all that hard to achieve since everyone was batshit insane.
Bree is a fucking sociopath, I feel bad for saying this but honestly this girl deserved everything she got and I can't believe the book actually tries to make you feel bad for her. Boo hoo you dumb bitch you didn't make the cheerleading squad get on with your life Christ. Literally who even fucking thinks it's an appropriate thing to create an entire fake account so you can emotionally damage someone you used to be friends with. I literally can't put into words how fucking insane that is.
HER MOM WAS EVEN WORSE.
This woman, instead of scolding her daughter and punishing her for being a literal terrible human being decides tO JOIN IN ON THE CREEPY CATFISH FLIRTING TO BE PETTY AT LARA'S MOM BECAUSE SHE'S AN UNFULFILLED MIDDLE AGED WOMAN.
The only decent, sane person in this entire book is Liam who calls out his sister for her absolutely insane behaviour and tells her that she's a literal piece of trash.
Look I get it, cyberbullying is a big thing in the age of technology and it's important to talk about ... but this book does a really bad job of it and I feel like if anything, makes it seem a lot simpler than any cyberbullying situation would be.
This book is terrible and I didn't even bother with the last 20 pages, thank you for listening to my TedTalk.
First off, the writing in this is literally so ... mediocre? It literally reads like mediocre fanfiction. And full offense this author literally hasn't spoken to a teenager after 2010 and it shows. I'd feel bad for saying it but I'm getting so tired of adults who have literally no idea what the teenagers of the modern day are like and writing them as whatever stereotype they have in their head. I would've let this slide if this had been written in like 2009 but this was literally published in 2015 so like ... get with the times.
People my age don't use Facebook all that much anymore, at least they don't use it in the way that it's portrayed in the book. Nobody puts you on blast and tells you to kill yourself on a Facebook post in the year of 2015. They just don't. They'll do it on a spam account on instagram or on their snapstory but even then they'll be shady about it, they won't ever mention any names.
Which someone would know if they had ever actually spoken to someone between the ages of 13-20.
Moving on.
All of these characters are like caricatures of human beings, not to mention they're all fucking sociopaths. Everything is so exaggerated to the point that it literally wouldn't work this way in the real world.
Lara is literally so annoying and I should probably feel bad for saying this considering her situation, but she was a fucking idiot. I get where her self-esteem issues came from, seriously I do, but I feel like the way that they were handled was so poorly and it honestly didn't feel like it came from somewhere deep. Maybe it's just me but I literally do not understand why someone would give two shits about the opinion of any boy, especially one they've never met in person. I don't know what it was but her situation just didn't feel real to me.
You mean to tell me, this girl goes from being perfectly fine for weeks and months on end and enjoying life ... to attempting suicide because one boy told her the world would be a better place without her? I don't know, maybe I don't know enough about this type of thing yet to be able to judge whether or not it was realistic, maybe someone really can make a complete 360.
Her sister Sydney is literally ... so self-centered. Her sister literally tries to kill herself and this girl thinks her life is hard because she can't make it to her audition. How fucking hard it must be for you to have a mentally ill sister. Why doesn't she just put on hold so that you can have some attention for five minutes. God she was so annoying but as annoying as she was, she was also one of the only sane fucking people in this book and that wasn't all that hard to achieve since everyone was batshit insane.
Bree is a fucking sociopath, I feel bad for saying this but honestly this girl deserved everything she got and I can't believe the book actually tries to make you feel bad for her. Boo hoo you dumb bitch you didn't make the cheerleading squad get on with your life Christ. Literally who even fucking thinks it's an appropriate thing to create an entire fake account so you can emotionally damage someone you used to be friends with. I literally can't put into words how fucking insane that is.
HER MOM WAS EVEN WORSE.
This woman, instead of scolding her daughter and punishing her for being a literal terrible human being decides tO JOIN IN ON THE CREEPY CATFISH FLIRTING TO BE PETTY AT LARA'S MOM BECAUSE SHE'S AN UNFULFILLED MIDDLE AGED WOMAN.
The only decent, sane person in this entire book is Liam who calls out his sister for her absolutely insane behaviour and tells her that she's a literal piece of trash.
Look I get it, cyberbullying is a big thing in the age of technology and it's important to talk about ... but this book does a really bad job of it and I feel like if anything, makes it seem a lot simpler than any cyberbullying situation would be.
This book is terrible and I didn't even bother with the last 20 pages, thank you for listening to my TedTalk.
I've never read a book that dealt with cyberbullying, and I think that this was very well written. I connected easily with the characters and thought it was very interesting to see how such actions can have consequences beyond what's expected. I loved the character development and how they all learned how to get through the incident while not taking away from the seriousness of the situation. Overall, I truly enjoyed this book and couldn't set it down.
Ah the infamous strip tease book. It was actually better than I expected.
Wholeheartedly judging a book by its cover, I thought this would be some vapid romance where someone made a mistake and doomed the romance. But no, it actually attempted to deal with serious issues. I think it dealt with them a bit too lightly and optimistically, perhaps poetically, but it seemed to work somehow.
Wholeheartedly judging a book by its cover, I thought this would be some vapid romance where someone made a mistake and doomed the romance. But no, it actually attempted to deal with serious issues. I think it dealt with them a bit too lightly and optimistically, perhaps poetically, but it seemed to work somehow.
This was a re-read. I still enjoyed the narrative, and I found the sisters perspective (Syd) very interesting and relatable. It was 4 stars the first time, but this time I knew all the plot reveals so it was enjoyable but not amazing. I will say that this second time the ending did seem to drag on a little bit, but the last scene of the book is very well done and I enjoyed reading it.
This took a while for me to get into. In the beginning, I could not really understand why Lara did what she did. I just couldn't connect with her. I also really did not like the person who messed with her and could not understand her actions either. Lara's sister Syd I could see why she felt invisible next to her sister but also really she could be selfish. Eventually, I got emotional and empathized with everyone's issues.
Esto lo puedo calificar como «truñacazo» a tantísimos niveles, que me canso con sólo de pensarlo. Si no es la prosa repetitiva y melodramática, no te preocupes que te va a asaltar uno de esos bellos momentos sexistas del nivel «papá es quien tiene sentido común y mamá es la histérica». Cabe destacar también la tendencia pasmosa hacia los «giros argumentales» manidos y remanidos (metidos con calzador, he de añadir).
Desde luego que no puedo estar más de acuerdo con compararlo con un telefilme de sobremesa, porque MAE MÍA.
TRU-ÑA-CO. No tiene excusa. Escribir literatura juvenil no significa subestimar las capacidades de tus lectores, copón. No por ser jóvenes son tontos, ¡TRUENOS Y CENTELLAS! Lo empeora que encima esté tratando un tema tan serio y tan actual como lo es el ciberacoso, pero desde fuera y sin hacer bien sus deberes de documentación.
Aunque en su favor tengo que decir que prescinde de palabras como slut, bitch o whore (las cuales salpimentaban Tease) y que no me ha cabreado tantísimo como la petardada de Anna and the French Kiss (ese sí que era el mar de privilegios en toda su gloria, navegado por niños que creen que lo peor que les puede pasar es que les manden a ESTUDIAR A PARÍS y que sus zapatillas no sean nuevas). Desde luego Backlash ni siquiera juega en la misma división que The Power of One y carece del encanto de Wonder.
Y aquí lo dejo. Que no lo recomiendo, vamos.
Desde luego que no puedo estar más de acuerdo con compararlo con un telefilme de sobremesa, porque MAE MÍA.
TRU-ÑA-CO. No tiene excusa. Escribir literatura juvenil no significa subestimar las capacidades de tus lectores, copón. No por ser jóvenes son tontos, ¡TRUENOS Y CENTELLAS! Lo empeora que encima esté tratando un tema tan serio y tan actual como lo es el ciberacoso, pero desde fuera y sin hacer bien sus deberes de documentación.
Aunque en su favor tengo que decir que prescinde de palabras como slut, bitch o whore (las cuales salpimentaban Tease) y que no me ha cabreado tantísimo como la petardada de Anna and the French Kiss (ese sí que era el mar de privilegios en toda su gloria, navegado por niños que creen que lo peor que les puede pasar es que les manden a ESTUDIAR A PARÍS y que sus zapatillas no sean nuevas). Desde luego Backlash ni siquiera juega en la misma división que The Power of One y carece del encanto de Wonder.
Y aquí lo dejo. Que no lo recomiendo, vamos.
I mean, if I wanted to read about awful adults, I would have picked up some literary fiction.
So important in concept, not a fan of the execution.
So important in concept, not a fan of the execution.
If you read the synopsis for this, you're probably thinking that it sounds like an After School Special, right? Or like a cheesy Lifetime movie, one that will probably involve suicide, a trial, a ton of uber-preachy lectures about bullying (both online and in real life) and lots of tears? Lots and lots of tears?
Here's the thing about Sarah Darer Littman's books: she can take a hot button topic and make you feel sympathy for everyone involved. And she can take what would be a complete train wreck of a topic by anyone else and turn it into something that's compelling and fresh, and make you absolutely feel every word on the page.
Obviously, you'll sympathize with Lara. She's treated absolutely horribly by Christian and, even worse, by people that she thought were her friends.
And you'll sympathize with Sydney (Lara's sister), who's been living in Lara's shadow forever and whose entire life, it seems, has to revolve around Lara's attitudes and whims. And with Liam, who's Bree's brother. The two of them are also friends, and their relationship is affected by what's going on between the two families. They're collateral damage in this whole fight.
But the impressive achievement is that you'll also feel sorry for Bree. This is the story that's not told in these cyberbullying cases. While Bree does some horrible things in this book and completely betrays her former best friend (and seemingly takes a complete delight in doing so), she's also a kid. And she has to deal with so much because of what was just a really, really bad decision.
And that's the heartbreaking thing about this book: so many horrible things happened because of a few bad decisions and a few misunderstandings.
This is an amazing achievement and I need to read her backlist. (So far, the only other one I've read is Want to Go Private?, which is another stunning novel and one you won't soon forget.)
Highly recommended.
Here's the thing about Sarah Darer Littman's books: she can take a hot button topic and make you feel sympathy for everyone involved. And she can take what would be a complete train wreck of a topic by anyone else and turn it into something that's compelling and fresh, and make you absolutely feel every word on the page.
Obviously, you'll sympathize with Lara. She's treated absolutely horribly by Christian and, even worse, by people that she thought were her friends.
And you'll sympathize with Sydney (Lara's sister), who's been living in Lara's shadow forever and whose entire life, it seems, has to revolve around Lara's attitudes and whims. And with Liam, who's Bree's brother. The two of them are also friends, and their relationship is affected by what's going on between the two families. They're collateral damage in this whole fight.
But the impressive achievement is that you'll also feel sorry for Bree. This is the story that's not told in these cyberbullying cases. While Bree does some horrible things in this book and completely betrays her former best friend (and seemingly takes a complete delight in doing so), she's also a kid. And she has to deal with so much because of what was just a really, really bad decision.
And that's the heartbreaking thing about this book: so many horrible things happened because of a few bad decisions and a few misunderstandings.
This is an amazing achievement and I need to read her backlist. (So far, the only other one I've read is Want to Go Private?, which is another stunning novel and one you won't soon forget.)
Highly recommended.