Blog Tour: Eliza and Her Monsters
Hey, guys! It's been a while *again and again, I know, sorry about that*! So I have joined another Book Blog Tour from my friend Precious of Fragments of Life. This is my 2nd attempt to once more, go back to joining book blog tours. Although it's quite tough to squeeze in the time on reading books because l find it hard to still have the energy to read after the long day of work. Anyone can relate on that? I hope it does.
Anyway, so today is my turn to post my book review for Francesca Zappia's Eliza and Her Monsters. I'll try not to include any spoilers about this great book! *winks*
Title: Eliza and Her Monsters
Author: Francesca Zappia
Rating: 4.5 Stars!!!
Published May 30th, 2017 by HarperCollinsISBN: 0062290134 (ISBN13: 9780062290137)
Synopsis :
Eighteen-year-old Eliza Mirk is the anonymous creator of Monstrous Sea, a wildly popular webcomic, but when a new boy at school tempts her to live a life offline, everything she’s worked for begins to crumble.
In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, smart, and friendless. Online, Eliza is LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of a popular webcomic called Monstrous Sea. With millions of followers and fans throughout the world, Eliza’s persona is popular. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves her digital community. Then Wallace Warland transfers to her school, and Eliza 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. With pages from Eliza’s webcomic, as well as screenshots from Eliza’s online forums, this uniquely formatted book will appeal to fans of Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona and Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl.
Source: Goodreads
"Worth as s person is not based on any tangible evidence. There's no test for it, no scale. Everyone's got their own idea of what it is. But I can tell you that Monstrous Sea is not the measure of your value in life, Eliza. Whether or not you finish it does not determine if you sholud live or die."
One thing that I ultimately felt when I was reading Eliza and Her Monsters is jealousy. I am jealous of Eliza's talent of creating a phenomenal story all over the internet and her drawing skills. I will pay anything just to have that kind of talent.
Monstrous Sea is Eliza Mirks's art. She created the world, characters, creatures, and constellations from her heart. Writing the story was pretty easy on her and being on the internet is so much better than facing reality and interact with people. Nowadays, the internet is part of our daily routine. It gives us the opportunity to do anything we want and share that across the globe. No boundaries, we just see everything on the Internet. To Eliza, Monstrous Sea is her identity that makes her unique.
Some authors make themselves reclusive for a reason. Simply because they still wanted privacy with all the things that happened to them when readers get a bit overboard. In some cases, they are shy to face the world and their readers. I am guilty of the fact that whenever I finish a book and I feel I wanted the sequel in an instant, I tweet to the author like 'I NEED THE SEQUEL NOW!'. Of course, that is really exaggerated given that sequels typically releases a year after. Reading Eliza and Her Monsters made me realize how difficult it must be facing the pressure on stabilizing the foundation of the fandom and the stories itself. Authors and writers are happy when they have comments like that, but when it all pops out all out once, the panic comes in. That's how Eliza feels whenever she stays up all night to finish the two or three pages of Monstrous Sea. She loves her fans that she don't want to disappoint them. Because of the fact that people appreciate your work and support it, that is the best thing closest to heaven.
When Wallace came in, he became the plot twist in the book. Eliza's world shook, specifically dealing with reality is what scares her the most. Interacting on the Internet is easy, you can delete the sentence when you feel it is not right, but in reality, once you said it, it is already done. Eliza was quite afraid at first on how to deal with it, but I loved that she took the chance to be Eliza Mirk instead of LadyConstellation. She slowly unravels herself with the reality of facing her fans and gets to talk with them. It was a really a great thing to read that kind of setting. When a character chooses to get out of their comfort zone and face the things that scare them the most.
Wallace and Eliza 's relationship is a cute setting to read. Both characters are shy to tell what they truly feel and a lot of writing was involved instead of real-talk-mouth-moving conversation. But I did like how subtle it became from the start. And the risk of sharing their own secrets made the book even better.
There are snippets of the Monstrous Sea which almost gave me the feeling of reading two stories at once. One is Eliza's life itself and the other is her Monstrous Sea. I kind of like how it jumps to the comic excerpts of it. Looking at Eliza's work and reading it, it feels obvious how much she pours her heart out with every page.
With Eliza and her Monsters, readers have the opportunity to look into a writer's world. The art of creating a new world and giving the characters their fate and choices is astounding. This book brings a lot of familiarity of being at home with your fandom and shipping the sail to any OTP that we want to happen. You'll get to read a package of two stories at once in a magical and surpising way.
About the Author
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