Don’t Call Me Baby by Gwendolyn Heasley

Don't Call Me Baby by Gwendolyn Heasley
Genre: Contemporary
Release Date: April 22 2014
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: Publisher
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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. Hundreds of thousands of perfect strangers knew when Imogene had her first period. Imogene's crush saw her "before and after" orthodontia photos. But Imogene is fifteen now, and her mother is still blogging about her, in gruesome detail, against her will.

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 tell the truth about her life under the virtual microscope and to define herself for the first time.

Don't Call Me Baby is a sharply observed and irrepressibly charming story about mothers and daughters, best friends and first crushes, and the surface-level identities we show the world online and the truth you can see only in real life.

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.

My main issue with Don’t Call Me Baby is that everything about it was childish and immature. The characters were so freakin’ annoying, I couldn’t stand them. Instead of talking with their parents about their issues, Imogene and her best friend create a blog which basically bitches about their own mothers. It was uncomfortable to read about, and the fact that their teacher – who started the blog project in the first place – didn’t put an end to it was unbelievable.

It was incredibly immature for Imogene to do a thing like that, even if she is a young teenager. I couldn’t handle it. Imogene is a celebrity in the blogging world, and like I said this blog is her mother’s career. Watching Imogene mess it up in such a public way was frustrating and rage-inducing. I understand that she didn’t want her entire life to be put online, but instead of taking the high road she resorted to sabotaging her mother’s career.

Imogene’s friend, whose name I can’t remember, was particularly bitter and annoying. She, of course, falls out with Imogene at one point over the blog, and there’s this whole drama with the girls not being friends. It was cliche and ridiculous, and I was rolling my eyes at both of them.

I didn’t get anything out of this novel, and to be honest it felt like a giant rant about modern society and bloggers in general – particularly Mummy Bloggers. Imogene ended up taking time away from the internet and then went on to preach about how everyone should step away from their computers and enjoy their “real” life. I can see how it would offend some people, even if Imogene’s mother was on the very extreme end of the spectrum.

I wouldn’t recommend this book at all and it’s a miracle that I even finished it. Everything about it from the dialogue to the characters’ personalities (even Imogene’s mother’s) was immature and irritated. I didn’t come out of this book as a happy bunny, I can tell you. Maybe the younger crowd would enjoy this book, but I certainly didn’t.