Saturday 13 December 2014

'Girl Online' Zoe Sugg Review

Hey everyone :)

Today has been a crazy day ... lots of emotion and crying. I won't go into detail at the moment as this isn't what this post is about.

So I said I wasn't going to do the whole 'if I post a YouTube video, I'll post a blog thing' but since I've not done a YouTube video in over a month I thought I'd break my little rule.

So I'll start from the very beginning ...

A year or so ago after watching Shane Dawson's videos he collaborated with Joey Graceffa and I instantly fell in love with him (don't know why) I just enjoyed his warmth and love and his moments. At some point he happened to be visiting the UK - Brighton in particular and Zoella (Zoe Sugg) was in his video. He obviously linked her in the comments so I checked out her YouTube, saw she had a blog, Twitter, Tumblr - the usual social media platforms. Firstly I wasn't that interested in her - mostly because her videos were aimed at teenage girls doing their makeup or doing a milkmaid braid in their hair. So that put me off. So I moved over to her blog ... read that ... then went back to her YouTube videos again ... searched around and saw she did other ones with other YouTubers like Louise or her brother or her boyfriend and they were quite enjoyable - they would do cooking, baking, challenge videos or she'd just vlog in general < which I think is cool as you can see what she's doing in her day-to-day life.

That's how I found her ... and since then she's gone from her blog, to YouTube to her own beauty line which she unveiled earlier this year and she got a 2 book deal with Publishers 'Penguin'.


girl online zoe sugg shoutjohn


So my post is about her 2 book deal - she has already released her first book: 'Girl Online'. Now I genuinely loved this book. I read about her target audience and found out that it is aimed at 12-16 year old teenage girls << which I think is a load of crap. I think anyone can enjoy any book so we'll forget about that part. I'm 24, gay and a guy and I still liked the book - although I've always loved a good book and I'll give anything ago. As I'm very interested in the blogging world at the moment and the book is mainly about an anonymous blogger - it definitely caught my interest.

The book is about a girl called Penny whom starts her own anonymous blog called 'Girl Online' - only her gay best friend Elliot knows she is Girl Online. I won't give too much away as I don't want to ruin it. After an embarrassing moment at her school she decides to join her parents (whom are wedding planners) in New York to 'get away from it all' (if only we could all do that lol). There she meets a guy called Noah (he has a secret which you find out way later in the book) and she falls in love with him. But his secret threatens her blog and it gets a bit crazy ... but that's enough about the book.

The book also explores topics such as cyber-bullying, bullying at school, being a teenager in school, anxiety and panic attacks - some of which Zoe suffers from herself or her subscribers or followers have shared and suffered from.

As I said I really enjoyed the book. I did touch on the chapters being small but that's not an issue just a little nit-pick from me. The writing is also larger than other books so I congratulated myself on finishing the book in under a day - then realised that the writing was rather large and that was why I finished so quickly.

So I would definitely recommend the book to you to buy. It's currently on Amazon for £5 I think (or at the time of writing it is). It's very popular and I remember reading somewhere that in its first week it sold something like 87,000 copies (might be slightly off with the figure as doing this from memory).

In the video I touched slightly on what's going around the media at the moment. After the first couple of weeks once the book had been out and broke records and sold thousands of copies. A couple of newspapers I think released an article saying that Zoe didn't write the book. Penguin her publisher then released a statement basically saying she had help. But in this day - who doesn't get help when writing a book. There are alot of people defending Zoe and there are some whom are calling her a lier and cheat.

But as people are saying - where or when did she say she wrote all the book herself and had no help? - she didn't. In her acknowledgement she actually says thanks to all the people who helped her with the book every step of the way etc etc ... she even mentions the ghostwriters name. Regardless of how many blogs she's wrote - its her first book and there is no way she could have done it herself.

You can get her book here on Amazon UK for £5 for the Hardcover version. (correct as of 13/12 @ 00:10). As I mentioned you might be able to get it on Audible so check that out too.

Hope you guys are all well and are probably cuddled up in bed as it's just gone midnight here in the UK.

Toodaloo!


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