Review: Geek Girl by Holly Smale

Geek Girl
by Holly Smale
Published by HarperCollins Children's Books: 28th February 2013
Paperback: 378 pages
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Star Rating: 1/5










Synopsis from Goodreads:

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?

My Review:

This will probably be my shortest review to date because I really didn't like this book and so I DNF'd it at about 60%. I just felt like I was reading for it to end and that's never a good way to read. This book for me was a completely pointless exercise in rounding up cliches and unrealistic characters. It somehow feels much more out of date than expected; it's uncomfortable reading and I honestly despised the experience.

The thing that could have swayed it for me would have been some characters we could get behind and root for but honestly I found all of them to lack development and they didn't feel real to me. I didn't care what happened to them and I especially found the main character Harriet to be unrealistic and completely boring.

The writing of this was incredibly poor and I found it to be juvenile and the target audience seemed to be lost. It's marketed as YA but I think the language used was more Middle Grade with a seemingly YA subject matter. It didn't fit into any category which would make it difficult to know who should be reading it.

I found a lot of the characters in this to be problematic (mainly it's incredibly sexist) which made it so frustrating to read and eventually I decided not to bother anymore. I also hated the fact that for the majority of this book, we were told what was happening rather than shown and being part of the action.

Overall, Holly Smale is not an author that I think I will read from again.

Until next time, happy reading!