Internet Famous by Danika Stone Pages: 312
Published by Swoon Reads on June 6, 2017
Genres: Young Adult, contemporary, Romance
Source: Paperback ARC from Publisher
High school senior and internet sensation Madison Nakama seems to have it all: a happy family, good grades, and a massive online following for her pop-culture blog. But when her mother suddenly abandons the family, Madi finds herself struggling to keep up with all of her commitments.
Fandom to the rescue! As her online fans band together to help, an online/offline flirtation sparks with Laurent, a French exchange student. Their internet romance—played out in the comments section of her MadLibs blog—attracts the attention of an internet troll who threatens the separation of Madi’s real and online personas.
With her carefully constructed life unraveling, Madi must uncover the hacker’s identity before he can do any more damage, or risk losing the people she loves the most… Laurent included.
Internet Famous is a young adult standalone by author Danika Stone. I loved Danika’s previous novel, All the Feels so much, so when I saw that her latest novel was about a blogger, I knew this was another fandom-centric novel that I was going to really enjoy. And I really did enjoy Internet Famous. Not quite as much as I loved All the Feels, but I thought Internet Famous was a great read. It was fun in a different way than I expected it to be.
In Internet Famous, our main character, Madi is a famous movie and tv show blogger. She does these live re-watches of all kinds of movies and tv series that sound epically awesome! I want to find a blogger that does something similar, because I really love the idea! I enjoyed Madi. She is a normal girl with her own set of teenage issues that made her very relate-able. I loved that the book spoke the jargon of fandoms and internet communities. The glossary at the start of the book was a brilliant and really fun idea.
At first glance, this book looks like a ton of fun, which it is but it also deals with some pretty serious issues- like cyber bullying, hacking and various family issues as well. Madi is wonderfully teenage. Meaning she is not perfect at all. She over-reacts sometimes, she makes mistakes, but throughout all of it, she is an admirably hard worker. Honestly, I respected the way she treated her blog. (Yes she made some mistakes in her past. but you have to read on in the book to find out what they were and if they are haunting her present.) but who hasn’t? I loved her relationship with her special needs sister, Sarah. Sarah might have been my very favorite character in the whole book. I loved her. And speaking of other characters, my only annoyance with Internet Famous was Madi’s mom. She was awful, and Madi seemed to be getting the brunt end of stick for calling her mom out on being so absentee. Why was it Madi’s responsibility to pick up all the slack when it came to Sarah? I’m over crappy parents in general in young adult stories. It is such a pet peeve of mine. But putting my feelings for Madi’s mom aside, I loved the mixture of sweet first romance with geekiness galore that we got in Internet Famous. No one writes stories full of fandom goodness quite like Danika Stone. This book will be perfect for fans of Geekerella and All the Feels.
I loved Internet Famous. It was exactly what I was looking for in a fun story about an internet famous blogger, and it was an extra unexpected surprise in the direction that Danika Stone took the story of. I am such a fan of her books. She is an auto-buy author for me, for sure.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
This is my second Stone book, and I sort of love her style. She does cute, but with some weight. I love how you described Madi — “wonderfully teenage”, which is such a perfect description. She was pretty great, but she had flaws and the typical teenaged type fears, and I am glad they were built into her characters. I agree, her mom was sort of terrible, BUT Stone did let her redeem herself, sort of, towards the end, and that is so important for me as a reader.
I read this one too. I agree with so many of the points that you made. I’m really sick of crappy parents in YA. I hated that Madi basically had to fill the roll of parent when she was just a teenager. I wanted someone to call out the mom for her selfish behavior and that never really happened. That really frustrated me. I LOVED that they talked about cyber-bullying. I think it’s so important to have books that address this issue since this is the age of computers. Great review!