Do you remember the first time you picked up your favorite book?  Maybe it wasn’t love at first sight. Maybe you had to put the book down a few times because you had lost interest in the beginning or life got in the way.  Then again, maybe you fell in love from the first page and the rest just enraptured you even more. Well, I recently read a book that reminded me of all of those feelings I had when I picked up my former favorite book.

After six years of being utterly enamoured with some other—now nameless—book and growing bored of what I had been so passionate about before, I have found another.  (Cheesy. I know. I think I kind of sound like some wishy-washy girl who, after sticking with one makeup brand, decides that going after would be far more exciting and adventurous.  Or maybe boys would be a better metaphor. Oh well.) Anyway...

I recently finished Francesca Zappia’s Eliza and Her Monster, and I’ll admit I dropped it after the first chapter and didn’t pick it up again for at least two weeks, but it made me fall in love with reading all over again and—to be honest— even after my rocky start with it, it made me fall in love with the story.  

Real readers fall in love with more than just the story that gets fleshed out in their favorite book; it could be the characters, vivid descriptions, or even simply the writer’s style that catches us and reels us in.  When I fell in love with Eliza and Her Monster it was everything that I just listed that dragged me in and captured my love from another.  Zappia’s characters were terribly relatable, her plot intriguing, her themes unlike those outdated, mainstream ideas, and style perfect for the voice of the narrator.

Flawless (in my opinion).

Eliza and Her Monsters is about—get this—Eliza and her “monsters”.  Okay, but being real here, the book is about a girl named Eliza Mirk and the monsters that she, like every other person (and teenager her age), has inside her head that torment her.  Eliza is a webcomic creator, book fan, and pretty average “invisible teen” who tries to go through life unnoticed. After Eliza, as the book’s narrator, thoroughly introduces herself and her life, in comes protag. #2, Wallace Warland, fanfic writer and quiet new kid in town.  The story puts the two together in, what I think, is a perfect meshing of fandom and creativity.

Now, being real here, who doesn’t have a little bit of a crush on some book, movie or band?  Fandom is relatable, and Zappia’s book captures the ups, the downs, and the all-arounds of being a part of a fandom with a touch of perspective from the creators of the works people fangirl over.  Eliza and Her Monsters is a bit too romantic to recommend to your parents, but has just enough where it satisfies teen romantics but doesn’t turn off the average fiction reader and keeps fangirls (and fanboys of course— although I always think of fanboys as: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) fangirling (and fanboying) through most of the novel.

The characters do not have fake teenage problems.  There is no perfection in this novel. Eliza is the roll out of bed, sweatpants and sweater, don’t-do-homework, don’t-care kind of student that most teens can relate to.  She has her secrets, her run-ins with her parents (not over boys), embarrassing moments, and annoying siblings. And Wallace (in any other story, aka Prince Charming) is the quiet boy with family issues, high expectations for his future (and not necessarily from himself), a mixed family, and passions that not everyone really sees as “worth it”.

Real.  Life.

The setting, plot, and characters kept me reading to the very last page (and then staring at the back cover in disbelief that it was really over) even after having a slow start and having to put it down.  It was all so relatable and well written that I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good, easy read.

It’s the kind of book that would get a movie deal that the fans would automatically hate because it would ruin the original work and could never do it justice.

If we’re rating this on a 5-star scale, I would give it a 4.5 (as I never give out a 5-star rating because, let’s be real, improvement is a possibility for everything—even published works—and nothing is truly perfect).  I highly recommend picking yourself up a copy at the local library or wherever books are sold.