By Francesca Zappia

“In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless. Online, she’s LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves the online one, and she has no desire to try. Then Wallace Warland, Monstrous Sea’s biggest fanfiction writer, transfers to her school. Wallace thinks Eliza is just another fan, and as he draws her out of her shell, she begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile. But when Eliza’s secret is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart” (Goodreads).

I could not finish this book. This might be the first DNF that I review, but I just need to get my thoughts out. I also read this for the first time in like, eigth grade, so I do know how it ends and can say that it doesn’t get any better. So without further ado, my review of Eliza and Her Monsters.

Honestly, the plot wasn’t that bad. Eliza is lonely, her online life is her sanctuary, but something goes wrong and she has to deal with the wreckage. It definitely started out very slow though – the big revelation doesn’t happen until pretty far through the book, and the whole beginning is just developing her and Wallace’s boring and toxic relationship. Her life is well set up and you get a pretty good grip on Eliza and her relationships with others early on.

The style was not bad either. It’s told in a single POV, but the author intersperses every chapter or two with a drawing from Eliza’s webcomic and a little paragraph excerpt from her story. The art was kind of fun, but none of the excerpts made sense as a larger story or had anything to do with Eliza’s real life story. It was like Zappia had developed a bunch of OCs but didn’t have a story for them, so she put some pretty words next to them and shoved them in a different story so that she didn’t have to waste the OCs. Despite this, the drawings were still fun.

The other unique thing Zappia did was include excerpts of Eliza’s texts as conversations. Instead of some dialogue, it was done in a Character 1: Hello; Character 2: What’s up, format. This fit well with the story because two of Eliza’s closest relationships are remote and online, meaning all of her conversations with them are over text. She also talks to Wallace a lot over text. I thought it helped to show her reliance and technology and that some of her relationships highly depend on it (although as you’ll see, Zappia unfortunately treats this as a good thing).

Every character sucked, but Eliza was the queen of all terrible characters. Rereading this book so many years later felt like some serious Mandela Effect had been going on, because I thought Eliza was so mysterious and cool and misunderstood. But now it’s clear that she’s just a brat. There is so much I could say to complain about her.

For one, she acts like a victim way too often. I understand she has anxiety, but that doesn’t mean she has an excuse to treat everyone in her life so terribly, especially when they’re all very kind to her. I worry about the people with anxiety who read this book and think that’s okay (there were an alarming number of 4-5 star reviews on Goodreads and people saying “this book was written for me”). Her parents are the sweetest people – never giving up on reaching out to her, trying to raise her well, and making sure she’s taken care of. Yet she treats them terribly and acts like they hate her and don’t understand her. And the book completely demonizes them for it! She constantly complains to Wallace about them. Seriously? The worst things they did were ask her nicely to do the dishes one time (she rolled her eyes and thought nasty things about them in her head) and ask her to come support her brothers at their soccer game and actually pay attention (she ignored them and kept drawing and texting people). They asked her to put her phone away at Thanksgiving dinner and she acted like they were sending her to military school. She’s also constantly mentally insulting them for their interests – her mom seems to be a fitness and health nut, as well as her dad and brothers, but she’s always acting like that’s so horrible and weird and they’ll never understand her because of it. She resents them because they had her try some different sports when she was younger. Seriously? This book made athleticism seem like a horrible thing that only emotionally abusive people do. Maybe I’m taking too much offense to this because I’m a college athlete, but Eliza of all people should understand people not liking her interests. It’s extremely hypocritical. Anyone in her life who tries to help her with her unhealthy and destructive addiction to the internet is demonized.

She also is kind of a pick-me. She’s often mentioning how small she is or how small she is compared to Wallace (who of course looks like a football player) or how she never exercises but she’s just so skinny and people tease her for being so skinny, oh no so sad. She acts so fragile and like she can’t handle anything new in her life. Of course she had anxiety and of course that’s a problem, but she behaves as if everyone else, the whole world that keeps throwing life at her, is the problem. Girl it’s not the world’s fault you have anxiety! And how can you expect everyone to know when you hide in your hoodie and never talk to anyone? It’s selfish and ridiculous.

She also has what seems to be a serious internet addiction, which is made out to be healthy and good. If you get all of your social interaction online, you’re going to miss out on a lot of developmental and social cues. No wonder she has anxiety if she’s spent her whole life stuck in her phone.

The other characters were no better. In fact, the only characters I liked were Eliza’s family. Wallace was very annoying and it felt like Zappia made him half-mute just to give him some way to connect with Eliza on the “no one understands me” front. He just enabled her internet addiction. Of course, he was made perfectly for Eliza. He’s a sensitive writer who doesn’t like to speak and prefers to text, he’s still built like a football player, and Eliza doesn’t have to change at all to be with him. Not exactly healthy, but good for her. He did not seem realistic at all. I don’t remember this part super well, because I read it the first time so long ago, but there was a part where she wants to commit suicide or something? And Wallace comes after her and says she shouldn’t and she listens to him – not because she realizes suicide isn’t the answer but because Wallace would be sad? Even though he had just told her that she had to finish her webcomic so he could get a book deal for his fanfiction of it? That doesn’t sound like a good conclusion to the suicide issue?

Her online friends obviously had their own lives going on, yet she rarely asked them what they were dealing with and acted like a victim when they did have stuff going on.

There’s probably more I could say, but all you need to know is that the characters were one of the weakest points of this novel.

This book was definitely a kind of wish fulfillment for teens who love web comics and internet fandoms, yet also want a perfect boyfriend and to be famous and good at art. So if you want to read about this and a decent (kind of) anxiety rep, I would recommend. However, if you care about good characters and constructive solutions to internet addiction, don’t read it.

One last thing: Zappia annoyed me with how she kept plugging herself into the story. Like I said before, the art and story excerpts felt like she was just trying to show off her art and pretty words. And she actually wrote Eliza’s favorite book, Children of Hypnos, which she’s always talking about. That all kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but it’s easy to skip.