First of all, the only bad reviews I could find for this book were people who came into it looking to read about fandom and were annoyed that the book is more about One Direction. That's fair, but I came into it knowing it was about 1D, so I did not have that problem. The author used 1D as a way to examine trends and ways of thinking across fandoms in general, but yeah, it was really a story about 1D fandom specifically.

The whole time I was reading this, I was wondering who it was for. It read a lot like a nonfiction article from Vulture or The Atlantic or Slate or something and when I looked up the author I see she is a writer for The Atlantic, so that makes perfect sense. I also was thinking well this book isn't really for me because I kind of already know all this, I was There, watching from the sidelines, but it also isn't really for 'normies' like my mom, who would not understand this book even though I think the author was good at explaining things without making it too tedious. The audience is probably people who are 'online' but weren't in this particular fandom and always wondered what the fuss was about.

I thought that this book did a good job of telling the story of the fandom from beginning to end, though there was a little more about the current state of 1D fandom on Tiktok which I wasn't super familiar with. It was glossed over though perhaps because it's more of a nostalgia thing at this point, but I'm still kind of curious about what makes Larries stick with this sort of thing for so long. There was a good bit of consideration of the ethics of what fandom does, interviews with fans who thought one way, grew up, and regretted some of the things they thought or said, as well as a great interview with someone called the "Harry Fairy" who was a troll in real life but in a fun harmless kind of way. I hadn't heard about her before and I liked that story a lot.

I can't really think of anything that I had a problem with, I think there were a few things that could have been discussed more that were not, such as Zayn leaving, the rainbow bear, the way that fans sometimes broke boundaries in real life with stalkeresque behavior - though I understand the book is specifically about the Internet. The part about how fans use Twitter to get songs or musicians to the tops of lists, the way that kpop fandom's tactics also follow similar patterns - it was all very interesting and well thought out.

The only part where I was like hmm was a purely personal issue. The author got into 1D fandom when the documentary movie came out, which I think was more than halfway into it. I remember when 1D fandom was like two people on my Tumblr dash who watched the X-Factor. I remember when they were playing What Makes You Beautiful in FYE in the mall and I asked an employee if they had the CD and he had no idea what I was talking about. I was there from the beginning! But it's fine. This is a great book.

So this book sounds like it should be dumb. Fourth book in a series following the daughter of the President, Meg Powers. (The first three books were written in the 1980s). But this book, coming in at around 700 pages, was written in 2008. Though the premise may sound silly, it is actually so good and touching and moving and made me cry multiple times.

Meg Powers was abducted and tortured by terrorists prior to this book. So this novel centers around her recovery – physically (her knee was completely destroyed and she broke the bones in her hand to get free and save herself) and mentally (she battles depression, PTSD, and disordered eating patterns). Trigger warning for assault, mental illness, eating disorders, rape, PTSD, among other things. This book is heavy, for sure, but it is really really well-written. Meg starts out the book in a bad place, but decides getting out of the White House is what she needs, so she begins attending college, and it basically just goes from there.

I really enjoyed Meg's family – her parents are having a rough time with their marriage, her brother Steven is having issues with puberty escalated due to circumstances, and her little brother Neal is basically adorable. Her friends at school are fleshed out and interesting – even her Secret Service agents and some of the reporters that follow her around get character development.

By far the most interesting relationship in this series, however, is with Meg and Preston Fielding. He is her best friend, a thirty something man who is the most dapper person ever. He's handsome and intelligent and shares her snarky, witty sense of humor. I can't help but ship it, and if you look on AO3, all six fics from this series are Meg/Preston, so I know I'm not alone.

It's odd, because I have read the three other books in this series, and none of them gripped me as much as this one did. However, in this book, comparatively little actually happened. In the first book, Meg adjusts to living in the White House. In the second book, Meg's mother gets shot, and in the third book, Meg gets kidnapped. However, this book is most captivating of all of them, because the emotional and character development is just that strong. The mentions of how everyone around Meg felt when she was missing for thirteen days rip your heart apart.

2021 Review: I think this book is much better on reread. It's hard to get attached when every chapter is a different character and there are so many to keep track of, but when you already know and are fond of the characters it's much easier to enjoy the ride. I do think that this book is very good for YA, but I think that's partly because the standards for YA fantasy are lower (see Leigh Bardugo's books before this one lol). I think that this book should have not been YA because all of the characters made much more sense as 20somethings. I still am not very fond of Kaz at all. I also still love Inej and Nina both separately and together and don't know if I agree with my past self as much on their treatment in this book. I really loved Nina/Matthias in the TV show but upon rereading this book I see that the parts in the show were really just a few pages of flashbacks. Kaz and Inej's romance is much more strong in this book than it was in the show.

2017 Review: This was good and I definitely enjoyed it while I read it but there were a lot of issues I had with it. The worldbuilding and actual plot was super interesting and compelling, it was complicated but easy to follow, and kept me reading so that's all good! I actually bought a hard copy of this book instead of going to the library, which I don't regret! The characters, however, kind of fell flat for me. Kaz was too cool. He was such a stereotype of a main leader character. Jesper and Wylan were the most interesting to me because I liked their dynamic a lot and wanted to see if it went in a romantic direction. I also liked Kaz and Inej's relationship, but Nina and Inej both really fell flat for me. I would like their characters but it just bugs me that the girl characters were imprisoned and/or had to work as sex slaves and then were rescued by their male love interests. I know they both were independent and had their own opinions about things and that's good but it still reminded me too much of The Name in the Wind. Which don't get me wrong, I like that book a lot too, but the few female characters in it aren't very well-developed, and the main character is a male 'Mary-Sue' type (I hate to use that term but don't know how else to put it). Anyway, I'm eager to see if some of my concerns are addressed in the sequel!!

The first section was way too much infodumping before they got going on the actual journey. I didn't need to know a history of the kingdom and it's trade routes, at least not for the story that was being told. But the most egregious thing is that the princess does NOT fall in love with the knight who's been sent to slay the dragon, her travel companion for most of the book, a girl in disguise as a boy, and instead in the last two pages she falls in love with the male dragon who somebody just HAPPENS to know the magic spell to turn into a human. Nonsense. Garbage. Also this book should be for kids not adults there was nothing adult about it and the fairy tale vibe would appeal more to kids anyway.

I'm not even sure where to start with this. While I had no problem diving right into this book, I think it would be useful to have a glossary or at least some explanation of some of the fandom terms used. Not everyone is going to know what an AU is. Other than the novelty of this book being about Dragon Con and fandom, there is nothing really here that I liked. Xander is so over the top he is a parody, and so is Liv. Her mother has real concerns about her daughter getting so involved in fandom that her grades suffer - and they DO suffer and it makes sense for her to be worried given that Liv couldn't get a college scholarship because of her time spent making videos! Her mom is shown to be working all the time paying for her daughter's school and all Liv can do is say YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!!! It's really immature.

Liv's short foray into trying to date people also seems really tacked on and unnecessary. She's into a guy, she asks him out, he says no, she yells I WANT TO DIE!!! and runs away. Later he finds her again, asks her out, and she runs away because he wants a threesome. What was the point of this? To show us that all other guys are bad and Xander is the only one for Liv? We didn't need this, nor did we need the montage of her dating all kinds of other horrible guys and even one girl (what was the point of this random nod to bisexuality if Liv isn't actually bisexual I'm so confused!). It was obvious from the beginning that Xander was endgame. Also, Liv's hatred of his girlfriend was ridiculous, especially when she complains that she's so nice it makes it harder to hate her. What a brat.

I actually enjoyed bits of the second half of the book because it is set at Dragon Con, and though I haven't been to that one, I've been to many other cons, and I like how the author captured the feeling of being among your people. The casual mentions of cosplayers everywhere rang true and I like how they were real characters and fandoms instead of made up ones. However, the other fans that Liv finally met in person were all caricatures of what people think sci fi fans are like. One of them was a clingy middle aged mom, the other was an angry drunk nerdy guy, and yet another was too shy to speak or look at anyone and could only text.

I did laugh a lot when it was clear that the actor did not want his character to be revived because he did not want to be in any more movies, but then Liv's online campaign caused the producer (?) to actually bring back his character for more movies? And Liv got an internship behind the scenes and she got together with Xander and he got to be an actor on the movie. Which sure, great, but what about her mom? Her mom's awful (caricature again) boyfriend? Her grades at school? What about how the actor wanted to go do indie movies but now he's being forced to be in another sci fi thing? THERE ARE SO MANY THREADS THAT GET DROPPED!!!! ALSO XANDER IS REPELLENT!!!! ALL THE WAY FROM HIS OUTFITS TO HIS PRETENTIOUS BRITISH ACCENT TO HIS M'LADYS TO HIS CONSTANT COMMENTS ON LIV'S BOOBS AND BODY!!!!!!! liv is horrible but even she deserves better than him.