Review: Don’t Call Me Baby – Gwendolyn Heasley

Posted May 4, 2014 by Andi in Books, Review / 0 Comments

Review: Don’t Call Me Baby – Gwendolyn HeasleyDon't Call Me Baby by Gwendolyn Heasley
Published by HarperCollins
Published: April 22nd 2014
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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.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.



thoughts1 This book pretty much frustrated me. I’m giving it bonus points because the two main girls were young and I can’t forget their ages when I think if their behavior. But I think what bugged me the most was how bloggers seemed to be portrayed. That really rubbed me the wrong way and brought this book down for me.

Don’t Call Me Baby is a story about how connected to the internet people really are. Imogene is a 15 year old girl starting 9th grade and everyone knows everything about her. She has been the subject of her mother’s blog Mommylicious since she was in utero with every detail of her life being shared with her mother’s readers. When Imogene is given a class project to create her own blog, she and her best friend, Sage, another daughter of a blogger, set out to prove a point to their moms that they don’t want to be plastered over the internet. As time passes the girls realize that a blog isn’t going to change things, they have to, and each goes their own way to do it.

I really thought based on the concept that this would be a fun book with a great story about how connected we all are to the internet whether it is social media, blogs or email. But that isn’t what this ended up being for me and that was because of one thing. I felt like bloggers were being made fun of with the use of Imogene’s over the top mother. Now I’m sure that wasn’t the intention, but I couldn’t shake the feeling as I read that that was what was happening and therefore I had a bad taste in my mouth for the whole book. I just think the whole thing was mishandled in terms of blogging and I couldn’t get past it.

What I did like though was the growth of Imogene. Like I said in the beginning, she was young, really young, and came across as whiny and immature. But I could see her point. I understood where she and Sage were both coming from so I ignored the immaturity. Which was good because as the book progressed both girls changed and matured and I didn’t find them so intolerable.

I guess there was just something off for me with this book that just didn’t sit right so therefore I couldn’t really find much to gush about. It did have a great idea behind it and characters that did grow up, but the blogging thing brought it down. It was a fast read, read it in one day, that moved quickly. Definitely not my favorite of the author, but not the last thing I’ll read from her either.

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