Don't Call Me Baby by Gwendolyn Heasley

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.

Reviewed by Leah on

3 of 5 stars

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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.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 19 March, 2014: Finished reading
  • 19 March, 2014: Reviewed