Girl Online by Zoe Sugg (Zoella) book review!

I'm going to do a bit of a book review of Girl Online. I'll try to not include any spoilers, but I cannot guarantee I want let some things slip.

So Tuesday I got a parcel and it was my copy of Girl Online by Zoe Sugg (Zoella). Although I am an avid lover of Zoe's blog and videos on YouTube, I wasn't sure if I'd like the book from her description of the contents. She said it would be cyberbullying, blogging, teen romance, touches on anxiety and issues that come with it and also friendships. It's not wrong ALL that is included in the book. But when I heard that I was intrigued yet not overly excited.

Until I got my copy. I'll write the blurb out:
'Penny has a secret.
Under the alias Girl Online, Penny blogs her hidden feelings about friendship, boys, her crazy family and the panic attacks that have begun to take over her life. When things go from bad to worse, her family whisks her away to New York, where she meets Noah: a gorgeous, guitar-strumming American. Suddenly Penny is falling in love- and capturing every moment of it on her blog.
But Noah has a secret too. One that threatens to ruin Penny's cover- and her closest friendship-forever,'
So from reading this I became a lot more excited to read it, as I find the plot quite interesting along with the basic themes already mentioned.

So I began reading the book Tuesday night and finished it early hours of Friday, although this isn't the fastest I've read a book I do have to go to college as well and do work, but in comparison to other books I've read this was read in no time.

So the things that got me was the twists, I mean oh my gosh I couldn't predict how things were going to work out between Penny and friends or her and Noah, I was racking my brain on certain situations could be made okay, or how reactions of characters would be portrayed and it was all such a surprise despite the semi-revealing blurb giving the base of how things would go. The ending has to be the best, when it feels like all hope is lost out of nowhere it's regained in such a lovely fashion and I'm glad it was as I could not cope if it didn't have the final twist.

Another thing was the description especially of the anxiety and panic attacks also the uncomfortable feelings that was experiences by Penny when she was a little bit clumsy or embarrassing or her friends made her feel uncomfortable. As a whole I can relate the all of this, but the description of it all really got to me, I genuinely cried in the way Penny was portrayed to feel in certain parts of the book  it was so real and raw, to put it simply: I could relate. I don't think there was a part where she experienced anxiety, had a panic attack or was put down by friends that I couldn't relate to or cry about on how Zoe hit it right on the nose.

Finally was the friendships, now I'm sure most people have experienced both good and bad friendships and also had arguments with not great friends and best friends. So in this sense it was amazing. Her best friend in the book, Elliot, is awesome I mean the description of him is so cool I literally think all readers want to slightly be his friend- but this will fluctuate throughout the book as implied by the blurb. Also she has her bfis (Best friend in school), Megan, who I personally hated because I've known people just like her in real life who have treated me how Megan treated Penny, and the character plot between Penny and Megan is such a gripping one, the same as Elliot and Penny. I don't think either of these friendships should be overlooked because they've got so much development throughout the book as Penny develops as a character.

Anyway, that's probably as much as I can write about the book and how amazing I thought it was without giving away too much about the book. This is such a strong book recommendation, if like me you were a bit sceptical on how good the book would be, I just suggest you get it and read it as I highly doubt you will be disappointed.

So thank you for reading, please leave me any books suggestions below to read, I'm now reading 'The Help by Kathryn Stockett' and I'll keep you updated on how I find it.

Love,
Caitlyn xxx

Disclaimer: Any quotes from the book are not my own and belong to the publishers. No copyright infringement intended.

I'm a bit...torn?

This post is going to be probably slightly more personal than the others, not sure if to post it, but if I do please be kind.
I'm sorry this post might not be all cheery and upbeat, I promise to be more upbeat next week.
But I'm a little bit down, confused? I'm not too sure what I am. I just know I'm not the upbeat person I try and be.

I'm not going to pretend anything catastrophic has happened, it hasn't. But this week has been... interesting? I guess.
So basically for the last week or so my mum has been off work due to personal issues, and for all I love my mum we can easily get on each others nerves very quickly, so by spending so much time together it's been nice but also a little bit testing and snappy at times, which hasn't been great.

On top of that, college has been frustrating. Not so much going to college and the actual lessons, although they've felt very 'visual' and 'year 3, gluing and sticking' which I do not enjoy, it's been more the people.

I love my friends and maybe it's just me and because of how things have been recently but it's felt very on edge this past week or 3, within the group. I might be imagining it, or it might just be me but I don't know there feels to be a tension or something between a certain person and everyone else. I don't want to single them out as I said I love my friends they're everything to me. They make everything better and bearable, but it's just a feeling really. So I don't know if to ask this person if anything has happened because they've been a bit off or just leave it as it might just sort itself out...I don't know.

Another this is, I have a job interview and for everyone who thinks this is great news, I can understand why, if this was me a year ago I would have literally been jumping for joy. Which I was initially but now I don't even know if I should go to it. I was all happy and thinking I'd have 2 jobs and everything would be awesome but the more I've thought of this the more guilt and cons I've found with this job. I've not even got the job but I just feel so guilty for applying to it. I literally feel torn in two about it. I don't think I'm going to go though...I don't think I can bring myself to go.

It sounds all crazy and I don't know what's going on it my mind right now. Everything just feels like it's all jumbled and backwards and I don't know what to do... I'm even scared of posting this in case this makes everything worse. It's not like hardly anyone even reads my blog anyway so I don't know why I'm so concerned.

Anyway, for those of you who do read and enjoy my blog posts, I'm sorry if this is a let down or a bad post. I'm just in a bit of a strange place right now.
But thank you for reading,

Love Caitlyn xxx

My 15 festive favouites!

Hey Guys, this week I saw the Dear Tom/Carrie/Gi videos and thought this would be quite nice to have on my blog. 

This is my 15 festive favourites!

1. Festive food- My favourite festive food has to be pigs in blankets. I know it's really cliché but it's not Christmas without them!

2. Reindeer- My favourite reindeer is probably Blitzen. Mainly because I think the name is awesome. 
3.Day of Christmas- 7 Swans-a-swimming because when I was younger I couldn't sing it fast enough to keep up without being really lispy.
4.Christmas song- I don't think I have a set favourite Christmas song because so many are such great classics but I really like Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade. It reminds me of having Christmas dinner at primary school and everyone would stop and scream the 'IT'S CHRISTMAS!' part in such unity. 
5.Christmas present- My favourite Christmas gift I've ever received was probably my badge maker when I was 5. I had such fun with it! But my favourite gift I've given is probably going to be this year when I give my mum her Dr Martens because she's wanted them for ages now!
6.Christmas Film- It has to be either Elf, The Polar Express or Love Actually. 
7. Christmas Cracker toy- This changes depending on the cracker and if I need something from a Christmas cracker but I usually like the tiny pack of cards or the tiny sewing kit.
8. Christmas Cracker joke- What do you call a musical insect? A humbug. HAHAHAHA. No. 
9. Decoration- We have a merry-go-round bauble and me and my sister always argue who gets to put it on the tree.
10. Candle scent- I like Yankee Candles Mandarin Cranberry. But this year I've smelt Icicles and that's also really nice, especially for a fake scent.
11. Christmas advert- I quite like the M&S food adverts because the food looks so good! But I am also likely the John Lewis adverts as each year passes.
12. Festive Tradition- I'm not really sure we have a specific tradition on Christmas but maybe that we all have to watch the Queen's speech when it's on in dead silence. 
13. Place to spend Christmas- I quite like home Christmases or just family Christmases but there's a cute cottage that we went to when I was little with the whole family and it was the best Christmas I remember probably because I was so young and it was an hilarious year. 
14. Festive Fact- Coca-Cola was the original creators of our idea of what Santa Claus looks like. 
15. Snowman accessory- I quite like adding a scarf to a snowman, although it's lead to many snowmen decapitations in the past which is quite horrible to witness. 

Well that's my festive favourites; I hope you enjoyed reading them. If you would like, leave a comment telling my any of your festive favourites.

That's it until next weekend,

Love, Caitlyn x

Dreams and technology.

This post may be slightly more of a rant, for which I will apologise in advance.

But last week I had a nice deep think with myself on what I want out of life and what I want to achieve etc.
Basically the main theme of my goals is to write and I really want to write a book. I will obviously work all that out later on when I begin to write the book, I also want to help people with mental health issues but not in the generic counsellor sense, I want to do something revolutionary with it to truly help people not just give them 12 weeks of therapy then dismiss them to the world.  But yeah anyway back to the theme of dreams and technology.

I was in college the other day and a teacher said how we basically keep putting people out of jobs by creating technology that can do the jobs instead of humans or more efficiently than humans which isn't yet a concern but 10 years down the line and many technological advances it may be a higher concern.  But the teacher essentially said we need to be driving people to do higher qualified jobs that can't be driven out by technology and we need to discourage dreams. But how corrupt is that? We need to be encouraging dreams because a robot can't write a book, they can't set up businesses and create ideas. They can't write song lyrics from the heart. I appreciate a robot could do all this but not to the extent a human can getting the full emotion and experience in to the writing or the passion behind driving an idea to create a service or product that is the basis of a business.

But beside this, maybe what we should be discouraging is creating technology that drives people out of jobs or if that occurs securing the jobs in an alternate way, because there's a large enough struggle to find jobs as it is without lessening them by creating more technology.

Anyway, that's just my thoughts, feel free to express your own in the comments.

Book update: I may need 2 weeks to read each book until I'm back in to the swing of doing work, and reading faster etc. Although I'm loving We're All Completely Besides ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. I can't wait to finish it!
Also, sorry this post is a day late, next week I will be posting on a Sunday again due to being busy on Saturday night.

Thanks for reading,
Love, Caitlyn x

Books upon books.

Hi, this post is going to be about books, if the title didn't spoil it too much.
But first a small note on my absence.
I first wrote a post on this blog 2 months ago to the day, I think with the intention of writing once a week. Weeeeell...Cute story but I'm a full time college student who has a part time job so finding time has been a little interesting and difficult over the last couple of months.
But anyway on to the post.

I love books. Books are literally my life, without books I'm not sure what I would do. I love the concept that there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet and yet so many creative individuals can create stories with such depth, emotion and power with only a variation of the arrangement of the 26 letters.

So due to my passion of books and reading I'm setting myself a goal. I want to read a book a week until basically I need to buy more books. I gained this idea from Carrie Fletcher's Booktober.
The books I'm planning on reading/finishing reading are:

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves- Karen Joy Fowler.
The Help- Kathryn Stockett.
The Book Thief- Markus Zusak
A Monster Calls- Patrick Ness
Everything to Lose- Andrew Gross

Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
Great Expectations- Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
Frankenstein- Mary Shelley

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass- Lewis Carroll
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Severed Heads, Broken Hearts- Robyn Schneider.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson- John Green & David Levithan
One Day- David Nicholls.

This is a list of 15 books.  So essentially 15 weeks. I will just be reading book after book until I've worked through the list. But assuming I can weekly post on here then I will keep you updated on how far I've gotten through my list. Slowly ''crossing'' them off.

A small update from my last post. I said I was reading The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer, unsurprisingly I have now finished that and to anyone who is in to slightly psychological books with a few edgy plot twisting moments- while also slightly emotional I would highly recommend it. The book was absolutely amazing and so well written. It really captured the struggle of the main character and his experience with loss and mental illnesses. So a definite recommend.

That's all for this week. I will be reading We are all completely beside ourselves. I will be given until next Saturday.
Thanks for reading, I hope you have a nice week or whatever until my next post.

Love, Caitlyn x