Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

genre: young adult contemporary fiction

Eliza sees herself as, really, two different people.  There is the quiet girl who shuffles her way through high school, trying her actual best to just not be noticed by a soul.  And then there is her internet self: Lady Constellation, authoress and illustrator of the uber-popular online comic Monstrous Sea.  One Eliza is confident and creative and capable and the other is mortified by even the idea of popularity.  Anonymous is best.  For both Eliza's.

But when a new boy moves into town and suddenly her online world becomes less "online" and more "in-real-life," the fears Eliza needs to face and the choices she has to make will require all the courage she can muster.  Life always on the brink of panic is exhausting and Eliza knows she wants more for herself but to have her two worlds collide would just not be okay - not for her, and not for her beloved Monstrous Sea. 

There is so so much to love about this book.  It begs to be read in one grand gulp - from the first chapter I cared about Eliza and her world.  I loved delving into a fandom and the crazy dynamics of the online forums.  The text/picture format was engaging and wraps the reader into Eliza's headspace.  My only gripe, though, was that it was sometimes hard to piece together all the different plots of her comic that were spread out - I finally just gave up on keeping characters and settings straight and instead let myself just enjoy the beauty of the language and the drawings. 

Next paragraph could be considered a spoiler but no plot is revealed.

Most particularly, though, what I appreciate is Eliza's journey into deep anxiety and depression. How her relationships are affected, her thought processes, the words and ideas that the author uses to describe Eliza's descent into that black hole are so well done.  And I especially loved how Eliza dug her way out - I think books like this can be remarkable for their ability to engage younger readers in a dialogue about mental illness without being in any way pedagogic.  Eliza is amazing.  She is capable with an incredible talent. And she has debilitating anxiety that will eventually, we readers can sense, have to be dealt with.

Eliza's and Her Monsters is romantic.  It's creative.  It grabs you by the hands and makes you want to stay.