A review by kit_sheridan
Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

emotional lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

Warning: Brief spoilers


I first heard about Eliza and her Monsters years and years ago and have always meant to get around to reading it. The premise intrigued me immensely. A nerdy, introverted, creative girl with a secret, super-successful webcomic and the awkward new kid “who is actually a popular fanfic writer of that very webcomic. Golden!


My first impression before even starting the book was that it would probably have a similar vibe as Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, as they are both stories about young female creators learning how to navigate in online spaces as well as their in-person spaces. Whilst I enjoyed Fangirl at the time, I have since come to learn of several issues with Rainbow Rowell and her writing so I was super excited to give a new author a chance.


To start, my favourite part of this book was getting to live through the fantasy of being a successful creator online. I’m sure that many young creatives, from artists to writers to musicians and beyond, have yearned for their big break and the chance at fame, even anonymous fame behind an online persona. The concept of having tens of thousands of people genuinely interested in something you have created would be a dream come true for me. Even with this being said, Zappia makes sure to include the downsides to Eliza’s experience. The pressure of maintaining the quality of an ongoing product while only having a handful of people that she can confide in. Eliza’s character felt incredibly genuine, especially when depicting her mental health and her hesitance to address it. She is a character that has the one thing so many creative people dream of but that doesn’t make her some other-worldly, untouchable person.


In terms of engagement, I loved the first half of the book. I flew through it. I found the kind of awkward but endearing conversations between Eliza and Wallace to be cute and wholesome whilst still coming across as realistic enough to teenage lives.


My critiques with the book came further in, around the halfway point when the conflict started amping up.


It was at this point that the webcomic premise of the book started to take a backseat to the relationship, which I didn’t initially mind until I started to find elements of the relationship I wasn’t that fond of.


Firstly, I wasn’t that surprised by Wallace’s revelation that he had been lying about his past and didn’t find Zappia’s method of revealing this to be as dramatic as it seemed to present itself. From this point forward, I found Wallace and Eliza’s relationship to start to be a bit inconsistent and this all came to a head when Eliza’s secret is revealed to the school. Wallace feels understandably betrayed but I was waiting for a moment where the two talked it out and he came to see what the reader understand, that Eliza was keeping the secret because she felt she had to, not to hurt or mislead him . . . but we don’t get that. We get arguments, where Wallace vents his feelings and Eliza cries and apologises. We get a really sudden but ambiguous makeup scene when Wallace finds her at Wellhouse Turn. The strangest event that kind of put a damper on the whole relationship was after all this, where Wallace starts pressuring her to finish Monstrous Sea so he can get a book deal. I could understand how he felt the need to go for it to help provide for his family but I never quite saw him in the same light after that.


Overall, the ending just really didn’t provide me with any of the closure that I was looking for. Everything had an ending, but not in a way that was wrapped up nicely and felt earned.


A bit of a bad note to leave the book on, considering how excited I was when I was halfway through. At the end of the day, I still think this is a pretty alright book. It has some really fun moments and a great concept that I think could have been better executed.

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