Author: Francesca Zappia Publisher: Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins Imprint) Year: 2017 Pages: 385

In the real-world, Eliza is shy, friendless, and considered for most people, weird. But online she has an alter persona with an established fanbase. She is LadyConstelation, the anonymous creator of the webcomic Monstrous Sea that took the internet by storm. There is fanfic made out of her work, forums where every fan of the webcomic goes to hang out, and plenty of friendly nametags that she can call friends. Eliza can’t imagine the real world will ever be as amazing has the one she created online, until the day she meets Wallace. Despite pleasant to the eye, he is also a major fan of Monstrous Sea, but he doesn’t know that she is actually the creator.

This book… where should I start with this book… I think, first of all, I have to explain my expectations going in for this book. My first ever contact with Eliza and Her Monsters was last year around the time it came out. I read the first chapters on the Epic Reads website and got very into it. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t long after I finish Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell so I couldn’t avoid comparing both books, and ever since then, I’ve seen Eliza and Her Monsters as a similar book to Fangirl. But now that I’ve read both books, I can say for sure the only thing they have in common is the secondary storyline.

In Fangirl, the main character, Cath, is writing a fanfic off her favourite book series, and in Eliza and Her Monsters, the main character is writing and drawing an original webcomic. In both books, we get a glimpse into their work, and here is where the similarities stop. Both characters are in different stages of their lives. Cath is 18 and a freshman at Uni, while Eliza is 17 and in her senior year of high school. Cath also deals with social anxiety and Eliza at some point suffers from panic attacks and depression. It’s true that both books deal with mental health issues, but they do it very differently. Fangirl approaches the subjects more light-hearted while in Eliza and Her Monsters the subjects have a serious tone.

Comparisons with Rowell’s books aside, the story is very cute and exciting. We get to see Eliza growing up as a character and becoming a better person than she was. She learns how to deal with her parents and younger brothers as she tries to navigate in high school. Like many students, she just wants to do what she likes, and in her case, it doesn’t include algebra or English classes. Although her parents don’t see it that way and she feels misunderstood. It’s very easy to relate with Eliza at some level when we feel that our parents don’t listen to us or ignore our own opinions, ideas, and objectives.

Unlike some other books that usually don’t pay much attention to the parents as important characters in teenagers’ lives, in Eliza and Her Monsters, her parents take a big part. Not only they try to connect with their child but also grow and learn how to deal with their first teenage daughter. It’s very interesting how it’s not only Eliza that grows throughout the book but also her parents.

The relationship with Wallace is what sets in motion Eliza to change herself. She starts to go out more, to have fun, make friends outside of the internet, meeting new people, and realise that the real world isn’t that bad after all. I thought their relationship was so cute and slowly build up. I, however, don’t like how it turned out in the end. Despite all, I adore Eliza so much that I can overlook one little fact.

Since creating a webcomic is a big part of her life, she never forgets her love for Monsterous Sea, and it’s a constant throughout the book the pressure she feels to create new things, to try an manage an online world and also an offline one, and how it can be everything we think about 24/7. Anyone that creates some sort of content online can easily relate to this book at some point and how most of the times we aren’t taken seriously.

Mental health issues is an import part of this book, and the representation is so well done, although it doesn’t take much of it. It surprised me to see that those problems were only added to the narrative closer to the end instead of appearing in the middle or the beginning of the book. It still has a lot of room to develop but doesn’t have much to conclude, if that makes sense. Overall, it’s a happy book about some seriously hard topics.

I also tried to compile a spoiler part in this post, but then I realised that I have a lot to say about Eliza and Her Monsters. And if I leave it all in one single post, it would be 3000 words long, and even though I don’t mind writing it, I imagine that it’s not the most appealing to read. After all, this is a review, not an essay. If you already read Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia and want to know in depth my opinion on this book without any censoring, continue by reading this post.

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