Girlcrush: The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller

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Even with a two dimensional non-binary-who-was-clearly-written-as-a-butch-lesbian-and-changed-at-the-last-minute best friend Eartha is completely naïve to everything queer (I'm guessing she hasn't listened to Rose speak for their entire friendship). For example, after coming out Eartha learns that scissoring isn't a thing, why people who sleep with women cut their nails short and what a gender neutral bathroom is. At 25!!! In 2030!!! It’s sold in Tesco: women have come to my book events saying: “I’ve never considered myself a feminist. I bought your book because it looked pretty. And then I came out the other end of it saying no to my husband, growing out my armpit hair, telling him when I don’t want to have sex.” I want women who think that they haven’t got the education to be a feminist to talk about this stuff. It should not be gate-kept. There are parts of this book that were so ridiculous that it made me angry (why had she never heard of an INCEL? I know that biphobia is a thing but why are people acting like it's so ALIEN?). Interessant finde ich auch den Wechsel zwischen den verschiedenen Stilarten, wie er hier stattfand. Manche Stellen sind wie ein normaler Roman geschrieben, manche wie ein Drehbuch, vieles auch in Form von Postings mit den entsprechenden Kommentaren oder Chatverläufe. Ich mochte das, ist aber sicher nicht für alle was.

I know this is meant to be a story about a messy character, but you're given no reason at all to care about this selfish, awful woman from the start of the novel. What the author has succeeded to do is write a book of two halves. The second half succeeds in the message….. but you have to get through a very problematic, nay HARMFUL first half to get the message. And by then it’s lost.The plot was also questionable imo, the "twist" at the end felt like it was inserted as an afterthought and didn't seem to fit with the first 3/4 of the book... Spelling errors irritated me. Maybe it was rushed out for publication or more suited for a younger audience (what is happening to me) This book was a mess. On paper, it should have been really compelling. Using modern social media as a way to explore the Jekyll and Hyde themes of duality, public life vs. private life, and addiction while also talking about what it's like to come into bisexuality "later" in life, like on paper this should have been a great story. Touted as a modern retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, the book focuses on Eartha's internal struggle finding her true self, and makes for a dark and thrilling read you won't be able to put down. Florence was handed the keys to the kingdom here and yet, this book was undoubtedly one of the worst things I’ve ever read. If Florence wasn’t Florence, this manuscript wouldn’t even have made it past the assistant’s desk at the publishing firm let alone onto bookshelves globally. So it's no surprise there's plenty of hype around her debut novel Girlcrush, published on the 9 August and set to be one of the best books of 2022. Girlcrush tells the story of Eartha, who embarks on a journey of sexual exploration as an openly bisexual woman who becomes embroiled in a dangerous online world.

Some of the things I liked about this book were the discussions about the internet and the complexities of being bisexual, even within the very lgbtqia+ community, as the character describes either feeling like people judge her for being too gay or not gay enough. Spannend fand ich die Entscheidung des Verlags, hier tatsächlich alles strikt durchzugendern. Machte für mich auch voll Sinn und passte zu Eartha, aus deren Sicht wir die Geschichte erzählt bekamen. Es passte so gut, dass mir erst im Nachhinein auffiel, dass das nicht so im englischen Original stehen kann. Die meisten Bezeichnungen sind im Englischen auch so schon genderneutral (zumindest meines Wissens nach), deswegen muss während der Übersetzung diese Entscheidung gefallen sein. Wie gesagt, ich fand das super spannend. Und es machte mir auch Lust, mal das Original in die Hand zu nehmen, um zu sehen, wie das denn dort geschrieben wurde und ob mir dort überhaupt irgendwas auffällt.Also, as someone who has gone viral on the internet many times myself, the statistics in this book are all wrong. Why does Eartha get sooooo many followers overnight in comparison to how many views and likes she gets on her video. It’s completely out of proportion and in reality, if anyone posted a sloppy drunken video being like “I hate men, I think I’m gay”, it would just be scrolled past. It isn’t inspirational, it’s normal, and wouldn’t garner anywhere near as much attention as Florence claims it would in this book. it’s like florence given looked up struggles of bisexual women and instead of portraying them with any kind of complexity she turned them into a caricature that had me (a bisexual woman who understands the source of the problems she was trying to portray here) rolling my eyes. like there is literally a scene in this book where the main character makes out with a man and some random girl bursts into the room, films her and then yells at her how she is a fake queer woman (the internet later on agrees with her and cancels eartha lmao) and then the next second the dude eartha made out with tells her that he thinks that women having sex with each other is hot but that he doesn’t want anything to do with her if she would date women and is disgusted by her bisexuality. i can tell that florence given really thought that she was a genius for touching upon three issues bisexual women face at one when, in reality, she only turned them into a joke by exaggerating this scene to no end. I’m sure Florence would say that sentiments like these are exactly what she’s talking about in the overarching message of the book but like, I’m sorry, you had the makings of a book handed to you on a silver platter and you still managed to make it an unbearably frustrating (for all the wrong reasons) read. Journalist Moya Lothian-McClean said: “I’m still thinking about Florence Given’s prose… Once again, publishers and editors involved in that… have a word with yourselves.” And I couldn’t have put it better myself, really. Related stories recommended by this writer:

Erst im Juni habe ich mein erstes Buch der Autorin gelesen, die dafür ja auch sehr gehyped wurde: "Frauen schulden dir gar nichts." "Girlcrush" wiederum hat online weniger Aufmerksamkeit bekommen. Das hängt wahrscheinlich unter anderem mit dem Genrewechsel zusammen, zumindest ist das meine Theorie. "Girlcrush" ist nämlich kein Sachbuch bzw. Ratgeber, sondern ein Roman. Und noch dazu nicht unbedingt der einfachste Roman, den ich je gelesen habe. Was jetzt für mich nicht unbedingt etwas Negatives ist, ist halt einfach nicht mehr für alle Menschen einfach so zugänglich. In Given’s debut novel, we follow Eartha on a wild, weird and seductive modern-day exploration as she commences life as an openly bisexual woman whilst also becoming a viral sensation on Wonderland, a social media app where people project their dream selves online. The distance between her online and offline self grows further and further apart until something dark happens that leads her into total self-destruction, forcing Eartha to make a choice; which version of herself should she kill off? Women Don’t Owe You Pretty was a concise, witty, compassionate guide to navigating feminism. Did it achieve what you wanted it to? The hardest thing for me is to extrapolate who I would even be without the internet. Social media is my gateway to the world and to making connections with people. When it comes to the physical boundaries I have with my phone: it’s never in my bedroom, it’s always charging in the kitchen. And when it comes to what you share online, I always take a beat.

The only part of this book that felt genuine was Eartha's experiences with the darker side of social media. The pain that Florence clearly went through at the hands of theslumflower's followers was awful to read through Eartha's experience (let's all agree not to comment/message people on social media and tell them to k*** themselves? maybe?). Eartha finds fame online on Wonder Land, a social media app where users can create an online persona that represents their dream self, but she soon realises that being a viral sensation isn't as glamorous and exciting as it first seems. My pussy opens up like a rosebud at the sensation of her touch.” Sorry, but this is a REAL line from the book. It sounds like a 30-year-old man trying to sext like a poet. In Given's debut novel, we follow Eartha on a wild, weird and seductive modern-day exploration as she commences life as an openly bisexual woman whilst also becoming a viral sensation on Wonderland, a social media app where people project their dream selves online."

My friends have never spoken to me about their weight. We openly talk about sex we have, we openly talk about masturbation, and we’re very honest about our feelings with one another. We say no when we want to. But it is also because my friends are queer or they’re bisexual.

Author

In diesem Roman geht es um Eartha. Sie ist eine bisexuelle Künstlerin, wohnt in einer grottigen Wohnung und hat gerade ihren Freund rausgeschmissen, weil er sie mit einer anderen Frau betrogen hat und dieser Frau auch noch ihr Lieblingsshirt geschenkt hat, das sie selbst designt hat. Jetzt, wo er endlich weg ist (die Trennung war lange überfällig, da sind Eartha und ich uns einig) schafft Eartha es, sich endlich als bi zu outen - und ihr Outing geht viral. Ganz Wonderland (DIE Social-Media-Seite in Earthas Welt) hat dieses Video gesehen und plötzlich wird Eartha als die Stimme ihrer Generation gesehen. Alle kennen sie, alle lieben sie, alle beobachten sie. Und Eartha muss am eigenen Leib erfahren, wie schnell sich Liebe in Hass und positiver Zuspruch in einen Shitstorm verwandeln kann. This author has tried to do something pretty wonderful; use their voice to promote feminism, queerness, bisexuality and show us that social media is detrimental to our health and well-being… and that the world is still controlled by men.