Geek Girl - Holly Smale

Pages: 378

Publisher: HarperCollins

Release Date: 28^th February 2013

Edition: UK proof, review copy

Harriet Manners know a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a “jiffy” lasts exactly 1/100^th of a second and the average person laughs 15 times per day. She knows that bats always turn left when exiting a cave and that peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.

But she doesn’t know why nobody at school seems to like her.

So when she is spotted by a top model agency, she grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Even if it means stealing her best friend’s dream, incurring the wrath of her arch enemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of the impossibly handsome model Nick.

Veering from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her uber-geeky stalker, Toby, Harriet begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn’t seem to like her any more than the real world did. Can Harriet go from geek to chic before she ruins everything?

I’ve been hearing amazing things about Geek Girl for months and now, now I finally understand. It’s brilliant.

Harriet is a fantastic heroine. She immediately endeared herself to me with her spouting random facts and using them to fill the gaps in awkward conversations along with hiding under tables. Sometimes Harriet could be a little arrogant and condescending, but not on purpose and it just made me love her even more for some strange reason!

She also took a brilliant journey throughout Geek Girl and the message that it delivered was perfect. It’s really something that girls need to learn, especially me sometimes: be yourself and embrace it. You may be a geek, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing because there are people that love a good geek every now and then. That sounded slightly wrong but you know what I mean... I was also so refreshing to not have a romance at the centre of the novel. Harriet discovering herself and negotiating her relationship with her family was at the heart of the novel and I loved it.

You can definitely tell that Harriet is from her dad’s gene pool: he is hilarious. He was the child while Harriet was swanning around being a model and fending off vicious girls. His strops and pouting really made me laugh. I also really came to like Annabel. She was the perfect antidote to Harriet and her dad and was clearly the glue that held their family together. I didn’t think I’d like her at all, but I really did.

There were also plenty of brilliant secondary characters that came in with Harriet being thrown in to the scary world of modelling. Alexa is a cruel, cruel person and she was so horrible to Harriet seemingly for no reason and I just couldn’t understand why. Then you have my favourite: Wilbur. He of the outfit that looked like he’d plucked random items out of a dressing up box and his wacky pet names – love him. I also developed a strange affection for the highly intimidating Queen of Fashion, Yuka. I have no idea why, but she’s awesome and very interesting.

Geek Girl is a funny, heart-warming and endlessly cool novel and I can’t wait to read more from Holly Smale.

For my 2013 Debut Author Reading Challenge, 2013 YA Contemporary Reading Challenge and 2013 British Books Challenge.

Thank to HarperCollins for sending me a copy to review.

Sophie