Book Review: "My Life as a Hashtag" By Gabrielle Williams

Hi all!

Happy holidays, by the way! I'm sooo glad vacation's come, finally!

So I meant to make this a review ages ago, but I kind of forgot. I read this book about a month and a half ago, and I liked it, but I think I expected it to be a bit better. This is the cover:

So I'll start with the things that I liked about the book:

*note, there are minor spoilers here, so if you really want to read this book without knowing anything about it whatsoever I suggest you don't read ahead.* 😊

It showcased how you have to be really careful about how you handle social media really well. Cyber-safety is a really good message to have in a modern book like this, and Gabrielle Williams handled this issue satisfyingly. MC, the main character, gets into a situation where she posted some very mean things about her friend on her tumblr blog, and this post eventually goes viral. This is very exciting for the reader and I was continuously turning each page so fast because I simply had to know what was going to happen next.

The ending was satisfying. It wasn't great, but it was satisfying. I wished there could have been a bit more detail at the end of the book though. Although I am glad that is was wrapped up at the end The plot was also quite enjoyable, and I was really hooked to this book.

And I think that's all I have for good sides of this book. I can't really say much else.

So here's what I most certainly did not like about the book (be prepared for a lot of criticism here):

I bought this book because immediately I thought that it would be something like a story about a girl who posts something that was a mistake online (I don't know, possibly a revealing photo or something like that, something that would cause problems) and then has to deal with the consequences. What I was not expecting was for this whole disaster was because of two girls fighting over something. And of all things, this simply had to be a boy. It reinforces this whole 'I can't do anything without a guy' thing, and I strongly dislike books that have this message. It also annoyed me that MC and her friend Anouk were so horrible to each other, only because of this boy. And (spoiler) he turned out to be a mega-douchebag. Typical. I really can't believe that the main character would fight, bully and actually unfriend one of her best friends who was super nice, friendly and trustworthy, for a boy who wasn't even interested in her anyway. I really wish books like this would represent feminism and being single a bit more. Girl power, am I right? Ok, I think you get the idea. Phew.

Also, MC wasn't exactly my favourite protagonist of all time. Actually no, she was far from that. She really, and I mean really irritated me. The whole storyline pretty much just proved that she was this selfish teenager who was at the point in her life where she was annoyed at everything, and took all of her anger out on her friend. I'll be honest when I say that I did really like her at first, but then she made some decisions (ahem, all the tumblr posts) that I definitely wouldn't do if it were me in the situation.

Now after reading this, it'll seem like I really didn't like this book. But that's not exactly true. I did like it, it's just some aspects of it annoy me. My final rating is 2 and a half stars. Tell me what you thought of this book, and what you would rate it!

Peace out,

Bubbles xo 😇

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