Goodreads Summary:After a shout-out from one of the Internet’s superstar vloggers, Natasha “Tash” Zelenka finds herself and her obscure, amateur web series, Unhappy Families, thrust into the limelight: She’s gone viral.
Her show is a modern adaptation of Anna Karenina—written by Tash’s literary love Count Lev Nikolayevich “Leo” Tolstoy. Tash is a fan of the forty thousand new subscribers, their gushing tweets, and flashy Tumblr GIFs. Not so much the pressure to deliver the best web series ever.
And when Unhappy Families is nominated for a Golden Tuba award, Tash’s cyber-flirtation with Thom Causer, a fellow award nominee, suddenly has the potential to become something IRL—if she can figure out how to tell said crush that she’s romantic asexual.
Tash wants to enjoy her newfound fame, but will she lose her friends in her rise to the top? What would Tolstoy do?
My Rating:5/5 stars
Plot:
The minute I read the synopsis for this book and saw that it featured an ace protagonist I knew that I had to read it. I’m kind of getting emotional thinking about the book and how much it means to me and I’m honestly just still in disbelief that this book actually exists. This book could be lowkey about an asexual character just sitting in their room and doing nothing and I would fucking read it because I am that desperate for a book like this. Luckily besides the fact that this book features an ace protagonist, the plot is really awesome.
We follow Tash:vlogger and co-creator of a webseries called Unhappy Families an adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and how she copes with this overnight fame that occurs after a famous vlogger mentions the webseries. I love watching webseries so I thought it was so interesting to see Tash talk about directing, writing, shooting and everything that goes with filming something like this. I really think it’s great that we’re getting more books that are portraying YouTubers because it’s such an interesting subject that has a lot of potential to it.I also liked how we saw both sides to the fanbase,the amazing ones who makes gifs and fanarts, and then the haters who will criticize you no matter what you do. I really think it’s important to portray fans as they are, and show the ugly side because it’s a sad truth that not everyone seems to realize. People really don’t understand that there is a person behind the persona. I’m not a youtuber or famous in anyway but I’ve seen booktubers review it and they seem to enjoy that aspect of the novel and find it realistic.
Not only is this book a great story about youtubers and creators, we also get some great family dynamics,friendship, and discussions about asexuality. This book really has everything and if there was one thing that I’d have to say that I’d like to have seen more was a little bit of the plot to the webseries because it’s something I’m really interested it and would’ve liked to seen a little bit of how they adapted it.
Characters
While this book is really great without the ace protaganist, it’s what made the book really special. I identify as ace myself so this book really meant the world to me. I’ve related to characters before but that was more like “oh they like books and I like books, cool.” but this is much more deep and personal and like for the first time I’ve really felt represented. Everything Tash said about being asexual was so relatable and I was just like yessssss somebody gets it. There’s nothing in this world that’s like being represented and I hope that I will feel this way many more times. Besides the fact that tash is ace, she’s just a really awesome nerdy human and she’s one of those characters who I’d love to be friends with.
I loved Jack and Paul, and their friendship with Tash was just so great and I thought some really important topics were discussed throughout the book involving their friendship and it was all just really great.I love awesome friends in YA, and Jack and Paul were the best awesome friends.
Fucking Thom. I hate Thom so much and I just really disliked him from the get go and just the thing that happened at the end was so frustrating and it was so sad and ugh.I understand why it was part of the story but that didn’t make it hurt any less.
Another thing that would’ve liked to see more of is the side characters: we have all these people in the webseries and I would’ve really liked to get to know them just a little better. We got bits and pieces but I would’ve liked just a little more development when it came to them.
The Book Thief Without Words 