Don't Call Me Baby

by Gwendolyn Heasley

Perfect for fans of Jennifer E. Smith and Huntley Fitzpatrick, Don't Call Me Baby is a sharply observed and charming story about mothers and daughters, best friends and first crushes, and our online selves and the truth you can only see in real life. 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. The thing is, Imogene is fifteen now, and her mother is still blogging about her. In gruesome detail. 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 define herself for the first time.

• ISBN10: 0062208527
• ISBN13: 9780062208521
• Publish Date: 22 May 2014 (first published 22 April 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 5 April 2024
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperTeen
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[Rowena]

A cute story that didn't take too long to read. It was one of those eye-opening books that struck a little close to home since this is about a girl who has been the object of her mother's Mommy blog since before she was even born. It's about her life and her need for privacy and trying to make her Mom see that. It's about a girl striving to get her life back from a parent who writes a blog for a living. I thought it was an interesting read but dragged a bit in the middle. Still, solid read.

[Amber]

I don’t have much to say about Don’t Call Me Baby. It was a dull book filled with boring characters, and I felt no connection to it at all. I spent the whole time as I was reading waiting for it to be over, because it didn’t have any impact on me.

The basic premise is that Imogene’s mother is a Mummy Blogger, who has been chronicling Imogene’s life since she was conceived. She’s a successful enough blogger that this has become her job and career, but Imogene isn’t happy with this invasion of privacy. Imogene and her best friend create their own blog which is used to counteract their mothers’ blogs and give their side of the story.

Read the full review on Books of Amber

[Leah]

As soon as I spotted Don’t Call Me Baby on Edelweiss, I thought it sounded like a thoroughly fascinating read – blogging is such a “thing” nowadays, but this is the first book I’ve ever seen that features it as the topic of a novel, and it’s not even about a blogger, but about the daughter of a blogger! I’ve had a good run of enjoyable books at the moment, and though I did enjoy Don’t Call Me Baby, and I did whizz through It (it’s such a short read) it took only three or four hours to complete the whole book, it was probably a bit young for me.

Considering I started Don’t Call Me Baby after reading a book about teenage bullies, it was something of a relief to have a much lighter read. Sometimes you just need a book you don’t really have to think about, and Don’t Call Me Baby is such a book. But despite the characters being 15, they seemed very young at heart. There’s nothing at all in this novel that an 11 or 12 year old couldn’t read. Which is a good thing, but I do like my grittier YA novels, I must be honest. This was quite sugary sweet, but it was fun nevertheless.

I actually expected more from the book – the synopsis promises that Imogene is going to essentially take back her life by using her school project to start a blog to get back at her Mom for all the years of crappy pictures posted online and having to know the whole world has read about her first period. But Imogene gives up on the idea fairly quickly, although I quite enjoyed her revenge posts, they were cute and gave her Mom a taste of her own medicine, but Imogene did eventually get her point across, even if she was a touch tame about it!

One thing I very much enjoyed about Don’t Call Me Baby was Imogene’s best friend Sage. She was all gung-ho about the getting back at their mothers plan, and I felt she followed through quite well, although I hated seeing her and Imogene’s friendship suffer. Don’t Call Me Baby was a very sweet, quick read. I don’t really have any complaints, it wasn’t a bad book at all and it was quite well written – for all her softness Imogene was an enjoyable narrator, one young girls can very much look up to and aspire to be like. I just personally prefer my characters to be a bit more ballsy, a bit older, perhaps. But I’m glad I read it, it was a fun read and just what I needed after my previous read.

[Ashley]

Nose Graze — Book reviews & blogging tips

Don't Call Me Baby is fun, a little fluffy, quick, and entertaining. It wasn't a super amazing read, but I do think it's a good book if you just want something fun and quick. I read this in one sitting. I had just DNF'd another book and I just laid down in bed, picked this one up, and didn't move until I was done. It was so easy to breeze right through it—I love that!

This book was definitely a family/life lesson kind of thing, but as a blogger myself, I was a bit torn. Ultimately, the main character Imogene absolutely HATES blogging. So you can see the problem, yes? Despite our differences there, I actually got along with the story okay. I could see the double standards that her mom had. Imogene's mom would blog about Imogene's first period and lack of acquiring dates to dances, which is SO HUMILIATING for her!! And everyone at her school could see that and laugh. Then Imogene blogs about her mom and how she feels like her privacy has been violated through her mom's blog, and her mom threatens to ground her for posting "hurtful and humiliating posts" about her. Massive double standard.

So in that sense, I totally got where Imogene was coming from! It was really easy to relate to Imogene and understand her actions. I think it's more towards the end when I started to get iffy. The message we come away with at the end is that you should spend more time "unplugged" and offline. As someone who loves blogging and spends a lot of time online, I think it was hard for me to connect with that final message. It's not that it's a bad idea, but it just doesn't resonate well with me personally, so I didn't fully connect with it.

I think the other big disappointment for me was when Imogene and her best friend Sage got into a big fight. They were in this fight for at least half the book! Up until that point I was really enjoying Don't Call Me Baby. Imogene and Sage were this awesome duo and it was like "the daughter bloggers vs the mommy bloggers"—I loved it! But once their fight started, things dwindled. It was suddenly a bit less exciting because Imogene was on her own and away from her awesome friend... it was just so much more fun when they were together.

I also think that Don't Call Me Baby is for a younger audience than I'm used to. The main character is in 9th grade and only 15 (also, since when is 9th grade still not high school? Apparently she was in 9th grade but in her last year of middle school..). The fact that she wasn't even in high school made the book feel a lot younger, and I guess overall the whole tone of the book was younger than I was used to. I do think that younger audiences will be able to connect with it a bit more than I was able to.

I know I had a lot to say, but despite all my opinions and thoughts, I did enjoy this book! Since it was a tad young for me, I saw it as more of a fun, quick, fluffy book. It had some funny moments and quirky characters (I LOVED Grandma Hope!). Don't Call Me Baby is a great book if you're in the mood for something light and entertaining!