Scan barcode
luannerare's review against another edition
1.0
11 year old me can write better fanfiction than this.
canadianbookworm's review against another edition
4.0
https://cdnbookworm.blogspot.ca/2017/05/a-girl-named-digit.html
dodie's review against another edition
4.0
Fun book, Digit is a totally likeable character in a self-created wild and intense situation. The cross-country travel from Cali to the east coast provided contrast, and the secrets behind the secrets were fun to toy with! A little mystery, suspense and romance make this a great teen read for both boys and girls, and math fans will find Digit's unique talent with numbers fascinating.
bookishdea's review against another edition
2.0
I got this book out for three reasons: 1) I like books about people with quirks like that, especially math ones; 2) I like thrillers, especially ones that are out of the norm; and 3) my family is full of SAMOHI alumni and future students (my sister starts in the fall, my brother will next fall, and my sister will in...eight years, okay, but still).
This book...didn't really live up to any of my reasons for reading it in the first place. Sure, "Digit" had a cool math ability, but besides it being useful on, like, two occasions, it was treated more as a "woe is me, I'm ~weird~" thing and less of a "hey, being a math geek is cool, look at my ability that is actually helpful". The thriller plot was...mediocre. The ~twist~ wasn't that much of a twist, and to be honest, there wasn't much mystery at all. The plot of the book was more about a romance between Farrah and the young FBI agent on the run than anything else. There was no suspense, there was no thrill to the book. And three, while SAMO is mentioned, she really could have gone to any other school in the US, because man. Talk about cliches. I don't know why she set it at SAMO, except...well, I have no idea. It's got a good reputation, I guess, but with family members in SMMUSD, including a mother who works currently in the district and used to volunteer at SAMO on a regular basis, and having went there myself and talking to my brother who went there and everything, it's pretty much unrecognizable, because it's not like that. Plus, it's a public school, and SMMUSD doesn't take new permit students older than 7th grade, it's notoriously hard to get a permit (because it isn't based on grades but basically first come-first served), AND as far as I can tell, Farrah's family did not live in Santa Monica. And really, hiding your ability at SAMO is pointless, because while there are a few cliques, I was one of those weird, gifted kids and I had lots of friends, who were just like me. SAMO (and SMMUSD) is known for its music program (my family has been involved in said program for, oh, forty years now) and it's a pretty dang welcoming place for kids who are ~different~, and kids there go on to great schools. Seriously, MIT isn't that big of a deal there, nor is being the child of an actress or a math professor (I went to school with kids like that, so do/did my siblings). For someone who grew up in LA (but clearly doesn't live there anymore), you'd think the author would be a bit more realistic about stuff like that.
This book...I just, I wanted, and I was pretty excited when I got it out of the library, but it was nothing like I expected or wanted. Actually, I think I'm going to go watch Numb3rs now, because even though I've never watched it before, it sounds like the type of plot I was looking for in this book and didn't get.
That said, I didn't dislike the book -- I didn't care about the book. I try to reserve 1 star reviews for books I really hated/threw against the wall kind of thing, so therefore the two star review.
This book...didn't really live up to any of my reasons for reading it in the first place. Sure, "Digit" had a cool math ability, but besides it being useful on, like, two occasions, it was treated more as a "woe is me, I'm ~weird~" thing and less of a "hey, being a math geek is cool, look at my ability that is actually helpful". The thriller plot was...mediocre. The ~twist~ wasn't that much of a twist, and to be honest, there wasn't much mystery at all. The plot of the book was more about a romance between Farrah and the young FBI agent on the run than anything else. There was no suspense, there was no thrill to the book. And three, while SAMO is mentioned, she really could have gone to any other school in the US, because man. Talk about cliches. I don't know why she set it at SAMO, except...well, I have no idea. It's got a good reputation, I guess, but with family members in SMMUSD, including a mother who works currently in the district and used to volunteer at SAMO on a regular basis, and having went there myself and talking to my brother who went there and everything, it's pretty much unrecognizable, because it's not like that. Plus, it's a public school, and SMMUSD doesn't take new permit students older than 7th grade, it's notoriously hard to get a permit (because it isn't based on grades but basically first come-first served), AND as far as I can tell, Farrah's family did not live in Santa Monica. And really, hiding your ability at SAMO is pointless, because while there are a few cliques, I was one of those weird, gifted kids and I had lots of friends, who were just like me. SAMO (and SMMUSD) is known for its music program (my family has been involved in said program for, oh, forty years now) and it's a pretty dang welcoming place for kids who are ~different~, and kids there go on to great schools. Seriously, MIT isn't that big of a deal there, nor is being the child of an actress or a math professor (I went to school with kids like that, so do/did my siblings). For someone who grew up in LA (but clearly doesn't live there anymore), you'd think the author would be a bit more realistic about stuff like that.
This book...I just, I wanted, and I was pretty excited when I got it out of the library, but it was nothing like I expected or wanted. Actually, I think I'm going to go watch Numb3rs now, because even though I've never watched it before, it sounds like the type of plot I was looking for in this book and didn't get.
That said, I didn't dislike the book -- I didn't care about the book. I try to reserve 1 star reviews for books I really hated/threw against the wall kind of thing, so therefore the two star review.
xterminal's review against another edition
4.0
Annabelle Monaghan, A Girl Named Digit (Houghton Mifflin, 2012)
Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free of charge by Amazon Vine.
If you ever wanted a stark example of how small changes made by professionals can help a book, pick yourself up (assuming you can find one on Ebay or the like) an ARC of the book now known as A Girl Named Digit. Which isn't the most eye-catching title in the world, I know, but it towers over the title on the ARC: Digit: She's Got Your Number. Oh, good lord. That's vanity-publishing-level title, right there. That one simple change will probably at least triple this book's readership. Which in my estimation is a good thing—a very good thing indeed. I picked this up, I have to admit, because from the product description I expected it to be an easy, fluffy read—teen chick-lit, Jennifer Weiner meets Spy Kids. And the book in no way disappoints on that front; it's just as fluffy and easy-reading as I expected it to be, but Monaghan goes way above and beyond the call of genre fiction in a number of respects.
The Digit of the title is a high-school-aged math prodigy who has been keeping her light under a bushel in order to fit in with the crowd. It's working; she's part of the popular-girls clique, to the delight of her method-actress mother and the chagrin of her UCLA-math-professor father. She's not really all that interested in the latest heavy-teen-drama TV shows, but watches them in order to be able to discuss them over the cafeteria table with her pals. And that's how she notices, three weeks in a row, a series of numbers that flashes at the beginning of one of them that, when decoded, results in a cryptic message. She soon discovers what it means in the most tragic way possible, and as a result finds herself being chased by a murderous TV station employee right into the arms of a young, hunky FBI agent. (There's an undertone of sexuality in their relationship that is both entirely realistic and potentially bothersome to those people who believe pedophilia laws are there to stop couples where one person is one day over the age of consent and the other person is one day under. But then, if you're that person, please just stop reading my reviews altogether until you've reconnected with reality, thanks.) This leads to... well, it's a fluffy spy novel. You know what it leads to.
Yeah, plotwise it's exactly what I thought I was getting, and I have no problems with that whatsoever. If it really were as fluffy as it seems, I'd still be sitting here telling you I recommend it, whether you're a thirteen-year-old girl or a forty-year-old guy, because it's quick, it's easy, and it's a lot of fun. But Monaghan has a great deal more under the hood than that. Both Digit and John (the hunky FBI agent) are very well-drawn characters who react intelligently to the world around them. Well, most of the time. And I can't get into the rest of the time without major spoilers, but since it's the crux of what I liked about the book, I'll have to dance around it. Even though Monaghan's setup for the novel's climax is utterly transparent and the denouement is as predictable as they come, by the time all this hits, you should be emotionally invested enough in these characters to actually care (and be kind of stunned by... that one's... utter stupidity despite the setup being so transparent even the characters can see it coming! which is actually kind of awesome, in a meta sort of way), because despite this being a book of less than two hundred pages, Monaghan has spent enough time building her characters' personalities that you can be that emotionally invested in them. Those TV shows Digit watches could take a few lessons from Monaghan.
The downside to all this is the the brevity of the novel coupled with Monaghan's taking the time to build characters that well is that the plot suffers occasionally. Points to Monaghan for having an ecoterrorist bad guy and not having them come off as misguided heroes (or just outright heroes), but the bad guys are just kind of nameless, faceless killers lurking in the shadows; we never get a bad guy we can really hate. Still, I wrote this off as it being a “cozy” (there are cozy mysteries, why can't there be cozy spy thrillers?) rather than it being a structural defect; your mileage may vary. One way or the other, though, I'm a big fan of this one, and I highly recommend it. ****
Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free of charge by Amazon Vine.
If you ever wanted a stark example of how small changes made by professionals can help a book, pick yourself up (assuming you can find one on Ebay or the like) an ARC of the book now known as A Girl Named Digit. Which isn't the most eye-catching title in the world, I know, but it towers over the title on the ARC: Digit: She's Got Your Number. Oh, good lord. That's vanity-publishing-level title, right there. That one simple change will probably at least triple this book's readership. Which in my estimation is a good thing—a very good thing indeed. I picked this up, I have to admit, because from the product description I expected it to be an easy, fluffy read—teen chick-lit, Jennifer Weiner meets Spy Kids. And the book in no way disappoints on that front; it's just as fluffy and easy-reading as I expected it to be, but Monaghan goes way above and beyond the call of genre fiction in a number of respects.
The Digit of the title is a high-school-aged math prodigy who has been keeping her light under a bushel in order to fit in with the crowd. It's working; she's part of the popular-girls clique, to the delight of her method-actress mother and the chagrin of her UCLA-math-professor father. She's not really all that interested in the latest heavy-teen-drama TV shows, but watches them in order to be able to discuss them over the cafeteria table with her pals. And that's how she notices, three weeks in a row, a series of numbers that flashes at the beginning of one of them that, when decoded, results in a cryptic message. She soon discovers what it means in the most tragic way possible, and as a result finds herself being chased by a murderous TV station employee right into the arms of a young, hunky FBI agent. (There's an undertone of sexuality in their relationship that is both entirely realistic and potentially bothersome to those people who believe pedophilia laws are there to stop couples where one person is one day over the age of consent and the other person is one day under. But then, if you're that person, please just stop reading my reviews altogether until you've reconnected with reality, thanks.) This leads to... well, it's a fluffy spy novel. You know what it leads to.
Yeah, plotwise it's exactly what I thought I was getting, and I have no problems with that whatsoever. If it really were as fluffy as it seems, I'd still be sitting here telling you I recommend it, whether you're a thirteen-year-old girl or a forty-year-old guy, because it's quick, it's easy, and it's a lot of fun. But Monaghan has a great deal more under the hood than that. Both Digit and John (the hunky FBI agent) are very well-drawn characters who react intelligently to the world around them. Well, most of the time. And I can't get into the rest of the time without major spoilers, but since it's the crux of what I liked about the book, I'll have to dance around it. Even though Monaghan's setup for the novel's climax is utterly transparent and the denouement is as predictable as they come, by the time all this hits, you should be emotionally invested enough in these characters to actually care (and be kind of stunned by... that one's... utter stupidity despite the setup being so transparent even the characters can see it coming! which is actually kind of awesome, in a meta sort of way), because despite this being a book of less than two hundred pages, Monaghan has spent enough time building her characters' personalities that you can be that emotionally invested in them. Those TV shows Digit watches could take a few lessons from Monaghan.
The downside to all this is the the brevity of the novel coupled with Monaghan's taking the time to build characters that well is that the plot suffers occasionally. Points to Monaghan for having an ecoterrorist bad guy and not having them come off as misguided heroes (or just outright heroes), but the bad guys are just kind of nameless, faceless killers lurking in the shadows; we never get a bad guy we can really hate. Still, I wrote this off as it being a “cozy” (there are cozy mysteries, why can't there be cozy spy thrillers?) rather than it being a structural defect; your mileage may vary. One way or the other, though, I'm a big fan of this one, and I highly recommend it. ****
bbgood's review against another edition
5.0
I've been reading a lot of duds of late, and I am so happy I picked up this book because it broke the streak!
This is a fun, humourous, romantic, action-y book. I loved every page. Digit was a great protagonist with a hilarious inner-dialogue and a quirky personality.
I want another book just like this one! Or maybe I'll just read this one again...it's worth a repeat read.
This is a fun, humourous, romantic, action-y book. I loved every page. Digit was a great protagonist with a hilarious inner-dialogue and a quirky personality.
I want another book just like this one! Or maybe I'll just read this one again...it's worth a repeat read.
booknaut's review against another edition
2.0
A Girl Named Digit is basically a story about a 17 year old girl, with a natural talent for finding patterns in maths and numbers, who involuntarily gets involved with a terrorist group because of her said talent.
This was a great idea and I was really looking forward to discovering an amazing book (and maybe gain some cool insights into maths along the way as well), but it was nothing like that!
The book focused a lot on Farrah's personal development and her accepting her ability and being proud of it. And I think that character development is really important in any book and sure there was tons of it in this one. However, I felt that it was way too overstated and thus it ended up completely undermining the main story line, which is really a shame because it had so much potential.
Also, the characters in this book were very
This book was in the first person and I really like that because you can feel everything the protagonist feels, you can think what she is thinking and I imagine it happening to yourself. But seriously, it was hard to connect with Farrah. It was like there was this huge empty gap between my mind and hers that I couldn't get rid of, no matter how hard I tried. It made me feel nothing.
Also, she was being targeted by a terrorist organisation. Who tried to kill her and John. Who were bombing people at airports and Disney World. And they get caught so easily? Come on! Where the hell is the "thriller"? And to make it worse, it wasn't even entirely Farrah who cracked the code! This was the biggest opportunity to give Digit her shining moment where she figures out everything all by herself. BUT NO! Her supposedly "stupid" friend is the one explaining the freaking Tree of Life and stealing her thunder! Why? Just why?
Another thing that really, really bugged me was the romantic aspect of it. You probably won't hear me say this a lot (because I'm a sucker for romance), but I felt like this one would have been so much better without it; especially given the whole sub-plot of Farrah accepting her true self and all. In my opinion, the romance was not needed. And maybe I wouldn't even say this if John was an interesting character. I mean he's good and all, but he doesn't have a lot of depth. Sure he has his dreams and he's passionate about them, but I feel like their relationship did not have much substance. (But then again, I'm not surprised. It was insta-love... sort of)
Oh and while we're at it, can we just talk about that utterly stupid and uncalled-for bit towards the end? Yes, John gets offered his dream job and he takes it, and honestly, I totally understood his reason. But that doesn't make it okay, even in the least. Secondly, when he does leave, I wanted Farrah to move on. Yes, there would be crying and heartbreak, but still. They weren't too deep in their
Don't get me wrong. I already told you, I love romances, it's just that this one was so unrealistic and puppy-love-type, it only added to my annoyance.
Overall speaking, this was a book with a could've-been-a-great-story but with characters with no depth or sense of connection, completely superficial and childish romance and the main story focusing somewhere other than what it said in the blurb.
Thriller? Yeah right.
atcucchetti's review against another edition
3.0
This fast paced read is perfect for readers who like Action adventure and a little romance.
imzadirose's review against another edition
4.0
A fun and enjoyable book. Great characters, good storyline. I wish the near end/end had been different, I mean everyone had to see it coming. Why not mix that up, do something unexpected, but oh well. Overall a really cute and good book. Looking forward to reading the next.
More...