Girlcrush: The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller

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The main character Eartha is in her mid 20s in 2030 and somehow a VOICE OF A GENERATION for drunkenly announcing that she is bisexual on social media (wow?). She's been friends with Rose (a non binary lesbian who has slept with every woman in the city) since high school. They didn't even need to come out as gay or non-binary because "the way they would recline into chairs with their legs wide open did that for them". I actually don't have words for how much I hate this line and how detrimental it is for non-binary people who aren't androgynous looking people who take up space like men so I'm just going to leave it there for you to reflect on. Get to Know Florence Given, an Artist Who Empowers Women". Glitter Magazine. 21 October 2019 . Retrieved 27 January 2020. I’m sure Florence would say that sentiments like these are exactly what she’s talking about in the overarching message of the book but like, I’m sorry, you had the makings of a book handed to you on a silver platter and you still managed to make it an unbearably frustrating (for all the wrong reasons) read. What the author has succeeded to do is write a book of two halves. The second half succeeds in the message….. but you have to get through a very problematic, nay HARMFUL first half to get the message. And by then it’s lost.

This is the perfect example of someone who is successful in one area believing that that success and skill will translate into others…… and it did not. They said: “It’s really, really similar. A lot of the ideas, a lot of the phrases. It’s all there. A lot of it is copied or reworded.” In diesem Roman geht es um Eartha. Sie ist eine bisexuelle Künstlerin, wohnt in einer grottigen Wohnung und hat gerade ihren Freund rausgeschmissen, weil er sie mit einer anderen Frau betrogen hat und dieser Frau auch noch ihr Lieblingsshirt geschenkt hat, das sie selbst designt hat. Jetzt, wo er endlich weg ist (die Trennung war lange überfällig, da sind Eartha und ich uns einig) schafft Eartha es, sich endlich als bi zu outen - und ihr Outing geht viral. Ganz Wonderland (DIE Social-Media-Seite in Earthas Welt) hat dieses Video gesehen und plötzlich wird Eartha als die Stimme ihrer Generation gesehen. Alle kennen sie, alle lieben sie, alle beobachten sie. Und Eartha muss am eigenen Leib erfahren, wie schnell sich Liebe in Hass und positiver Zuspruch in einen Shitstorm verwandeln kann. Some of the things I liked about this book were the discussions about the internet and the complexities of being bisexual, even within the very lgbtqia+ community, as the character describes either feeling like people judge her for being too gay or not gay enough.There are parts of this book that were so ridiculous that it made me angry (why had she never heard of an INCEL? I know that biphobia is a thing but why are people acting like it's so ALIEN?). She reflects on how same-sex dating can easily become blurred too. “As women, you're almost expected to be okay with being friends, but actually you're getting your heart broken. If someone asks 'do you want to be friends?' and you know you don't because you know deep down you secretly hope to sleep together again, don’t do that and maintain that boundary.” More than 100,000 signatures on petition to cancel Netflix show Insatiable". Ilkley Gazette. 24 July 2018 . Retrieved 28 January 2020. I’ve always been a little confused by how ‘Generation Z’ gets talked about nowadays, particularly since I am, apparently, one of them. (The cutoff seems to be somewhere between 1995 and 1997, which puts me, a 25-year-old PhD student, and my partner, a 27-year-old lecturer, in perplexing adjacency to the term ‘TikTok teen’.) But there’s clearly a thriving market for people who purport to be a voice for Gen Z, both for the sake of Zoomers who want guidance and relatable media, and for the sake of non-Zoomers who want to understand what interests and concerns young people. This is not the queer affirming book it claims to be. This is a book doused in queer stereotypes and harmful language. As a bisexual woman I found it littered with biphobia and severe problems around identity, femininity, masculinity and many issues catered towards our non binary siblings too.

As an out bisexual woman myself, and as someone who has a podcast with an advice section, I get hundreds of questions from women every day. Most of them are: “Am I bisexual? I don’t know if I am.” And I can’t tell people! I’m not you. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know your life. What I wanted to do in this novel is say that it’s OK not to know. And it’s OK to be confused. Basically, Florence uses the “F” slur far too comfortably throughout the novel, when it wasn’t ever a word for queer women to reclaim. Phrases like “d**e daddy” and “a random butch in leather” have pissed people off, too. The general consensus seems to be that Florence – a bisexual woman – has massively reduced her lesbian characters down to stereotypes. She also advises “taking everything with a pinch of salt” when it comes to consuming content and realising it’s not a case of ‘one size fits all’. A few years ago, Florence adopted the catchphrase “It’s a wonderful day to dump him” to remind people that life is too short to stay in toxic relationships that don’t make you happy. But, as she points out, not everyone took it well. “I know I used to shout ‘dump him’ on the internet but what really annoys me about the perception of that is people thought I meant ‘everyone should dump your boyfriend’ – but really it was about saying it so women who stumble across it take it as a sign if they were already thinking about it.”

For a seemingly sex-positive book, it’s FILLED with innuendos

Also, as someone who has gone viral on the internet many times myself, the statistics in this book are all wrong. Why does Eartha get sooooo many followers overnight in comparison to how many views and likes she gets on her video. It’s completely out of proportion and in reality, if anyone posted a sloppy drunken video being like “I hate men, I think I’m gay”, it would just be scrolled past. It isn’t inspirational, it’s normal, and wouldn’t garner anywhere near as much attention as Florence claims it would in this book. I know this is meant to be a story about a messy character, but you're given no reason at all to care about this selfish, awful woman from the start of the novel. Interessant finde ich auch den Wechsel zwischen den verschiedenen Stilarten, wie er hier stattfand. Manche Stellen sind wie ein normaler Roman geschrieben, manche wie ein Drehbuch, vieles auch in Form von Postings mit den entsprechenden Kommentaren oder Chatverläufe. Ich mochte das, ist aber sicher nicht für alle was. British Podcast Awards 2022 – full winners list announced". Radio Today. 23 July 2022 . Retrieved 19 December 2022.