May 20: Why Girls Are Weird

Over the weekend I was busy reading and laughing too hard to write much. The good thing for you is that now I have a book to recommend. Yay, right? I kinda suck at writing coherent book reviews, so let me just tell you this: read Why Girls Are Weird, by Pamela Ribon. Start to finish, I loved this book. It wasn’t so riveting that I couldn’t put it down, but it was so entertaining I didn’t want to put it down. I pretty much didn’t.

From the publisher:

She was just writing a story.

When Anna Koval decides to creatively kill time at her library job in Austin by teaching herself HTML and posting partially fabricated stories about her life on the Internet, she hardly imagines anyone besides her friend Dale is going to read them. He's been bugging her to start writing again since her breakup with Ian over a year ago. And so what if the "Anna K" persona in Anna's online journal has a fabulous boyfriend named Ian? It's not like the real Ian will ever find out about it.

The story started writing itself.

Almost instantly Anna K starts getting e-mail from adoring fans that read her daily postings religiously. One devotee, Tess, seems intent on becoming Anna K's real-life best friend and another, a male admirer who goes by the name of "Ldobler," sounds like he'd want to date Anna K if she didn't already have a boyfriend. Meanwhile, the real Anna can't help but wonder if her newfound fans like her or the alter ego she's created. It's only a matter of time before fact and fiction collide and force Anna to decide not only who she wants to be with, but who she wants to be.

I knew next to nothing about this book before I started reading, but it was recommended by a friend whose tastes I trust. And the first chapter easily drew me in; who could resist stories about the naughty things a girl used to make her Barbies do with her Donny & Marie dolls? (Here’s that chapter because I know you’re dying to read it.) I love books that make me look for Victor so I can read excerpts to him. This was definitely one of those.

Anna introduces us to some questionable fans and her family members, which are where some of the more serious elements of the book come in. I was especially touched by the way Anna dealt with her father’s sudden death—I could identify with her so well. She was single and in her twenties; I was married and a mom and in my mid-thirties… but regardless of age, when an adult daughter loses her dad, she goes through an identity crisis to some degree. There aren’t very many books that make me cry, but this one did. Just a little.

Mostly, though, it made me laugh. And ignore my family.

(I don’t think they even noticed.)

P.S. I wrote this review the other day. This afternoon the amazing Pamela Ribon left a comment on my blog. I’m totally “Tess”-ing out about it, and it’s taking everything in me not to revise the above review to include many occurrences of the words “fabulous,” “life-changing,” “epic,” and “most awesomest writer EVER.” Please commend me for my fan-dom restraint.