Review: Don't Call Me Baby (AKA, I'll call you something, but it isn't very nice.)

Don't Call Me Baby
Author: Gwendolyn Heasley

Publication Date: April 22nd 2014
~A copy was provided by HarperTeen and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review~
 

 

 

 

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All her life, Imogene has been known as the girl on THAT blog.

Imogene's mother has been writing an incredibly embarrassing, and incredibly popular, blog about her since before she was born. Hundreds of thousands of perfect strangers knew when Imogene had her first period. Imogene's crush saw her "before and after" orthodontia photos. But Imogene is fifteen now, and her mother is still blogging about her, in gruesome detail, against her will.

When a mandatory school project compels Imogene to start her own blog, Imogene is reluctant to expose even more of her life online...until she realizes that the project is the opportunity she's been waiting for to tell the truth about her life under the virtual microscope and to define herself for the first time.

Don't Call Me Baby is a sharply observed and irrepressibly charming story about mothers and daughters, best friends and first crushes, and the surface-level identities we show the world online and the truth you can see only in real life.

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A book has never angered me so much as Don't Call Me Baby, not even Shadow Kiss and that ending. I've also never wanted to hit a book so much in my life, there's not a lot of things that'll get me riled, but when it comes to double standards I will argue over it.

Don't Call Me Baby, while about taking a step away from this lovely laptop I'm typing off, going unplugged from the internet, it's also about Mother-Daughter relationships and these ones so dysfunctional it's bordering on emotional abuse. Yes, I may be dramatic but this woman is documenting every fucking aspect of her daughter's life online, on a worldwide famous blog- that now has sponsors and endorsements-She even asked her readers TO NAME HER BABY. And she nicknames her babyliscious- no one with one ounce of dignity would nickname her baby that, and create her own persona to make money off of her, even though Imogene's now fifteen.