🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Synopsis:

Her story is a phenomenon. Her life is a disaster.

In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless. Online, she’s LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves the online one, and she has no desire to try.

Then Wallace Warland, Monstrous Sea’s biggest fanfiction writer, transfers to her school. Wallace thinks Eliza is just another fan, and as he draws her out of her shell, she begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile.

But when Eliza’s secret is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart.

Review:

This is one of the books that I think I could read again. And honestly, I probably will some day. It’s beautiful, and I feel so much for the characters. Eliza was particularly relatable, with her anxiety and whole different life online.

For Eliza Mirk is the one behind the popular webcomic called Monstrous Sea, and her “real” life is a stark contrast to the one she leads online. In the real world, she is no one. She has no friends. Everyone thinks she’s weird. Online, she can lose Eliza Mirk and become LadyConstellation, the one with loads of fans waiting for her pages each week and snatching up her Monstrous Sea merchandise.

“I am LadyConstellation.
I am also Eliza Mirk.
This is the paradox that can never be solved.”

Eliza is content to live her life online until she graduates high school and heads to college, but then a boy transfers to her school. She assumes Wallace will ignore her as everyone else does… except it turns out that he is a Monstrous Sea fan. Not only is he a fan, but he is the most popular writer of the webcomic’s fanfiction stories. A relationship blossoms between them, but there is something Eliza isn’t telling Wallace—her identity as the webcomic’s creator.

One day, her secret is exposed, and the world Eliza has crafted around her comes tumbling down.

---

I think that in this day and age, with computers and phones now a big part of many of our lives, with chatrooms, forums, fandoms, all floating around in this intangible space, many people have experienced the feeling of having a different self online, or felt the disconnect between their real world and online one. This book broaches questions related to this: How are you separate from your online self? How do these two lives merge?

What do you do when your imaginary world pulls you stronger than the real one?

Eliza has become so drawn to her online world and Monstrous Sea that she has shut the real life out. She doesn’t spend much time with her family, and can come across as rude and mean towards them. With her social anxiety, trying to make friends is too hard, so it’s simpler to lead a life online where it’s easier.

“Monstrous Sea is my favorite thing in the whole entire world. I like it more than any person. I like it more than I like myself. I like it more than food, and sleep, and hot showers. I like it more than I like being alone. It is everything to me.”

She does have two good friends online, and it’s her texts with them that add a needed humor to the story. I loved how their texts and snapshots of the online forum and webcomic were smoothly incorporated into the book to show Eliza’s other life.

When Wallace comes along, a Monstrous Sea fan but in real life, she starts to see something in life that is not online.

Let me stop here to tell you how much I loved Wallace, and Wallace and Eliza together. Though his condition is never named, I believe that the best descriptor would be that Wallace is selectively mute. He doesn’t talk at school, and converses through paper or text instead. He’s of a bigger build, but he’s gentle, careful, and so respectful towards Eliza. This is my type of romance, okay?

He brings Eliza out of her shell without pushing her too hard, and though there is an attraction between them, they don’t jump straight into “let’s make out all the time”. The romance is there, but the book isn’t centered solely around it.

Her family isn’t overlooked either, and still plays an important part in the story. You see that they do care, even though they may not understand everything, and Eliza has to learn how to communicate with them.

To try to sum it up, this book is about finding who you are, and accepting that person. It’s about friendship. It’s about coming out of your shell. It’s about what lies beneath the surface (there are monsters in the sea, everyone!), for Eliza’s brothers are more than good at sports. Wallace is more than a big quiet guy who moves slowly.

Eliza is more than the weird girl in the corner at school.

Some possible triggers: discussions on suicide, suicidal ideations, panic attacks, anxiety, depression, and bullying.