Reviews with content warning for Abortion - No One Is Talking About This

This is a book about a minor internet celebrity whose perspective on life and how much of it is spent on the internet is completely changed when her family undergoes a tragedy. The first half of the book is very much no plot just vibes as the protagonist narrates her social-media-focused life, but the second half of the book, which focuses on her real life, is where it really steps up and becomes so profound and beautiful - sometimes it’s the little stories, the ones that don’t make the news, that most deserve to be told.

I thought that the writing was very clever: the whole thing is structured in small, Tweet-like sections of prose in reference to the theory that humans’ attention spans are getting shorter because of social media; the tone of the narration is littered with dark humour because many people nowadays use humour to cope with how awful life is; and the book perfectly captures the internet culture of the late 2010s - the period between the 2016 election and the pandemic when we all thought life couldn’t get any worse! - and yet at the same time there are so many absolutely beautiful lines, and you can easily tell that this is a book that was crafted with love.

I’m sure that a lot of the references will go over the heads of those lucky enough to not be chronically online, and it’s so much a product of its time that it will become outdated in a decade or so, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this book gets taught to the literature classes of the far future to get a good idea of the cultural zeitgeist of the Trump era, and those future children will stare at words like “binch” and “sneazing” with the same level of bewilderment as our parents, and the cycle will continue.

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13eyond's review against another edition

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1.5

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amandunzel's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

4.25

What an unexpected emotional ride. I didn't get most of the internet/meme references but I did relate to the descriptions of being sucked into it. It's an interesting stream of conscious journey with a significant heaviness to it starting halfway through.

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antifuchs's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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aliyachaudhry's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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softghoul_jpeg's review against another edition

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2.0

this book definitely wasn't my cup of tea. i think form was a bit on the nose. yes, i understood it was most likely to showcase the onslaught of information we take in by being online. but i feel that maybe this could have been done a little bit differently. while i did like her writing style, it wasn't strong enough for me to really enjoy it. i struggled so much to take anything in. i could read a paragraph twice and not be able to tell you what i read. part one was excruciating for me to read. i ended up just skipping most of it. it really didn't matter that i did as well. it was way too abstract, there wasn't anything concrete about the plot. i felt like i was grasping at air. part two was a lot better, but not by much. it seemed like we had an actual plot, but i still couldn't concentrate on the story. finishing this was like pulling teeth. i thought the concept was cool. but other than that, i would never read this again, nor would i recommend it to anyone.

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