Geek Girl

Those of you who dip your toes into the ocean that is Twitter may have noticed me mentioning a book for silly, soppy girls, called Geek Girl, by Holly Smale. In the interests of full disclosure, I have to say right now that I met Holly at the Harper Collins Summer Party last week and, well... she's kind of besotted with me. It's a thing, it happens, it's perfectly natural, so let's all move past it without making Holly feel at all self-conscious.

Thank you.

I exchanged a few tweets with her a few weeks ago, then visited her twitter page. I figured if she was half as funny in her book as she is on twitter, it'd be a book worth reading. So I bought it, and I've just finished it.

My Review of Geek Girl

Geek Girl is a book about a girl who is a geek. There are no ninjas in it. Virtually no one dies. There are two haircuts (one planned, one not). There are bizarre characters. There is one tremendously awful bully that makes you want to punch the page. There are clothes and shoes.

And DESPITE all the lack of bloodshed... this book is brilliant.

Harriet is 15 years old. She's a geek. She likes facts and figures and doing her homework. She's not exactly popular in school. She's just... weird. Her mind works in unusual ways. When she's plucked from her life and told she's going to be a model she thinks everything is going to get better— she's going to change and suddenly be cool and have friends...

There are lines in this book that will make you laugh out loud. There are jokes. One liners. Gags. Set ups and payoffs. It may deal with popularity (or lack of same), and it may deal with bullying, and insecurity, and it may play with the myth of metamorphosis... but even when Harriet is at her most vulnerable, she is never less than hilarious.

If it helps, you can think of Harriet as the younger sister to Clarabelle, in the Skulduggery books. She is, literally, THAT weird. And THAT loveable.

I would rate this book eight fish out of eight.


But please, let's not mention how much Holly fancies me. It's just... it's embarrassing.