Book Review: QUEENS OF GEEK by Jen Wilde

   

 

FACTS ABOUT THE BOOK

 

Title: QUEENS OF GEEK

Author: Jen Wilde

Publisher: Swoon Reads

Price: $10.99

Pages: 262

Genre: Fangirls, Convention, LGBTQ*

Year: 2017

 

 

 

 

BACK OF THE BOOK

   

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

"QUEENS OF GEEK" tells the story of the three geeky friends from Australia, Charlie, Taylor, and Jamie, who go to their first convention in the USA. Charlie has 3 million followers on her youtube channel and fans who are very invested in her love life. Charlie has dated her co-star Reese Ryan for a while and all the fans adored them together and shipped them as "Chase". But now they broke up because Reese cheated on Charlie and Charlie plans to portray herself as an independent woman at the convention. Charlie is a proud bisexual girl and always had a crush on the youtube superstar Alyssa Huntington, who also happens to be at the convention. When the two meet, everything changes.

Then there's Taylor, Charlie's best friend, who is very introverted and has social anxiety. The convention presents a huge challenge for Taylor and she is very dependent on her best friends, Charlie and Jamie during it. Since Charlie is mostly occupied with press stuff, Taylor spends most of the time with Jamie, and they grow closer together, while Taylor has to face a lot of situations that scare her.

 

 

   

 

MY OPINION

 

Relatable

 

I found this book to be immediately very relatable. As you probably know: I am a very geeky fangirl and proud of it. :) So I absolutely loved that this book was about three geeky friends who went to fangirl heaven, a fan convention, together.

 

Still, I would have loved it even more if the most important celebrities that the trio geeked out about, would have been actual celebrities - because that could have led to me geeking out over them aswell.

I much more enjoyed all the references to actual fandom stuff that exists outside the book.

 

 

Great Introvert Representation

 

Taylor, one of the two main characters, is a precious geeky introvert and a great representation of introverts in general. Although I consider myself an ambivert, I could still extremely relate to Taylor.

Taylor's social anxiety is extremely realistically portrayed - I haven't yet read anything else in which social anxiety was that well depicted.

I really appreciated Taylor's insights into her anxiety and world view a lot. Her introspection gave her character a lot of depth. And since I aswell overthink everything way too much, I identified a lot with Taylor in that aspect aswell.

Unfortunately, Charlie in contrast to Taylor, lacked a lot of the depth that Taylor was given.

 

Taylor often posted on her Tumblr blog - which I found cool because I love Tumblr and therefore love it getting mentioned - but she presented herself so entirely different on there than she seemed to actually be. I didn't like that too much since it felt quite fake.

 

 

Bisexual Representation

 

I loved how open Charlie was about her bisexuality. The book talked about her sexuality, but also always made it clear that it was normal but a part of Charlie that one couldn't just deny or ignore. I also enjoyed how authentic Charlie felt to herself. She was clearly mostly happy in her own skin, and although she also had moments of self-doubt, I really enjoyed her self-confidence. It was especially nice to read about two such contrasting characters as Taylor and Charlie, who are such close friends.

 

I always felt like I knew Charlie when she appeared in Taylor's chapters, but then she seemed totally different in her own chapters and I felt like I lost my bond to her. I would have loved more insight and depth into Charlie.

 

 

The two lovestories

 

Surprisingly, I really loved both the lovestories.

Taylor and Jamie's friendship felt so incredibly healthy and beautiful that it gave a strong ground for a relationship to develop thereon. I loved the way that Jamie treated Taylor: he was perfectly understanding and helpful to her.

 

Concerning Charlie - I very much liked how clearly it was shown that her ex-boyfriend Reese was toxic for her. The reader was never given a moment to doubt that but instead it was greatly shown why Reese's behaviour was extremely hurtful to Charlie and others. I found that to be very important, especially for younger readers.

 

I also adored the sparkling lovestory between Charlie and her forever-crush Alyssa. These two were just incredibly sweet together and it was a pure joy for me to read about them fall for each other.

 

 

Important quotes

 

There are many amazing quotes, sentences and whole parts in this book that are very important and beautifully written. This was one of the first books that gave me the urge to mark certain quotes to be able to reread them again.

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

"QUEENS OF GEEK" is a light read that provides geeky entertainment for a couple of hours and I very much enjoyed those. But, since this book got hyped quite a lot on Bookstagram, I had actually hoped for even more than that.

I loved all the happy and fluffy moments in it which make it a book that definitely lifts every reader up and guarantees to put a smile on the reader's lips.

Unfortunately, this book is rather short with not even 300 pages, which is why I would have liked a few more pages more a lot, since that would have given the author the chance to give each of the three friends more depth and make them rounder as characters and in their bond.

The motivation behind this book is amazing (the author wanted to write a book about a bisexual girl and an autistic introverted girl with social anxiety since she herself is a bisexual autistic introverted girl with social anxiety). Diverse books are always needed and I loved the representation in this one because it was greatly done and I think that a lot of people can relate to these characters.

 

I can definitely recommend this book a lot to other fangirls, and especially to queer and/or introverted fangirls. I really enjoyed it but I had expected more of it because of the huge hype surrounding it.

It does no good to compare books too much to one another, but because the last book I read had been such an extremely amazing one, I can't help but state, that "QUEENS OF GEEK" just couldn't entertain me as much as "THE GENTLEMAN's GUDE TO VICE AND VIRTUE" could. (Click here to read my 13 Reasons Why Everyone Should Read This Book)

 

 

 

MY RATING

I award this book with 4 out of 5 stars.