Friday 19 July 2013

Review: Geek Girl by Holly Smale

Geek Girl
Geek Girl by Holly Smale

Published: 28th February 2013
Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books
Genre: Young Adult / Contemporary / Romance
Series: Geek Girl #1
Page Count: 378

Synopsis: Harriet Manners knows a lot of things.
She knows that a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a "jiffy" lasts 1/100th of a second, and the average person laughs 15 times per day. What she isn't quite so sure about is why nobody at school seems to like her very much. So when she's spotted by a top model agent, Harriet grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Even if it means stealing her Best Friend's dream, incurring the wrath of her arch enemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of the impossibly handsome supermodel Nick. Even if it means lying to the people she loves.
As Harriet veers from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her uber-geeky stalker, Toby, she begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn't seem to like her any more than the real world did.
And as her old life starts to fall apart, the question is: will Harriet be able to transform herself before she ruins everything?


Review:
3 / 5 stars
I received an ecopy of Geek Girl from NetGalley and read it very early on this year, unfortunately as you can see the review hasn’t come until now thanks to college.

Geek Girl is about Harriet Manners who is, well a “geek” and gets the opportunity to spin her life around for what could be the better. 
I say could because before it can become better things definitely take a turn for the worse.

For someone who is a self-proclaimed geek, she doesn’t exactly apply her knowledge to anything that is happening around her and I think this it what bothered me the most.

Basically, Harriet ends up being scouted for a fashion company even though she doesn’t want that kind of life style and it is exactly what her best friend wants out of life. Of course her best friend is going to be upset, and of course Harriet ends up saying yes in hopes to improve her life and put an end to the bullying but in doing so she ends up lying about the whole event to her best friend.

And what do we know about lying? It’s not good. Ever
No matter how organised and planned out the lying is, its not worth it.

I know the girls are only in school and well what can you expect but it just took away a lot of the fun from the story from me because all I could think was “if you were honest, spoke and explained the situation to your friend then honestly she’d be very supportive of what you were doing” but nope. 

*sigh* is it really that difficult to communicate?
As John Green said it one of his vlogs “USE YOUR WORDS” it seriously helps the majority of situations.

So as you can see the characters left me a bit frustrated at times (it didn't ruin the book luckily) but aside from that it was a fairly enjoyable read, seeing how Harriet ended up solving the whole modelling business and coming clean on live television and proving how she’s not a flat-photoshopped-mannequin but has actual things to say made up for all the nonsense I had to put up with. I also liked the whole relationship aspect with Nick, it was cute. 

I kind of did expect more geek in the book though but it got washed out a little during the fashion-shoot-holiday but I think if there was a flash forward to a few weeks after the television interview at the end, we’d probably see a Harriet who is a lot more comfortable in her own skin.

I would like to point out though that this is definitely a lot closer to the Y in YA and I probably would have enjoyed it more at a younger age, and I'm more than likely to pick up the sequel to see how Harriet handles her new life.

Amazon *
Holly Smale: Website | Twitter | Goodreads
When purchasing through this link, I will earn a small amount, once I have enough saved up I'll put it towards a giveaway.


Please note: I'm still on holiday - due back today - do you like my new format for reviews?

4 comments:

  1. That always frustrates me too when characters hide stuff and lie. And then it blows up in their face and they're surprised and upset when they could have avoided it all along haha. This one sounds like a cute premise, but I'm not sure if I'll ever pick it up. Great review!

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, yeah it is pretty frustrating but luckily it was an easy read, cute and enjoyable for the most part :)

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  2. I think that even with some frustration, I still want to give this book a try at some point :)

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    1. Thats good c: it is a pretty cute book just yeah, its kinda annoying that this is often a trait found with characters that make me dislike them. Luckily she fixes it all c:

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