Don't Call Me Baby

by Gwendolyn Heasley

[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.