Why Girls are Weird, by Pamela Ribon

• Pub. Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
• Pages: 320

 

Rating: 3/5

 

Synopsis

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.

Review

Quick read - I gulped it down in a night. When I found this book at the library, the summary was catchy enough. Enjoyable and hilarious. Some of the posts literally made me burst into giggles, and I'm not the giggling type. Also, the similarities were uncanny to my own life - the family atmosphere as well as the after-college-drift-to-find -meaning. There were heartbreaking that helped to round out the emotional scale; can't really go into too much detail, but the main character had a really crappy year, but somehow found a way to keep the humor in her writing. I also liked the underlying theme of the online persona: if you make up stories, are you lying to your online readers? I have no idea. Thankfully, my content is not so personal that I have to consider such things.
Overall, I liked the book, but the point of ending sucked huge. How can you leave it like that?!

PS - I would just like to say, 25 is NOT old.