Girlcrush: The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller

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As an out bisexual woman myself, and as someone who has a podcast with an advice section, I get hundreds of questions from women every day. Most of them are: “Am I bisexual? I don’t know if I am.” And I can’t tell people! I’m not you. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know your life. What I wanted to do in this novel is say that it’s OK not to know. And it’s OK to be confused.

So, it’s time to embrace the cringe and confront our fears. Here’s a rundown of why people are absolutely trashing Girl Crush: For a seemingly sex-positive book, it’s FILLED with innuendos The main character Eartha is in her mid 20s in 2030 and somehow a VOICE OF A GENERATION for drunkenly announcing that she is bisexual on social media (wow?). She's been friends with Rose (a non binary lesbian who has slept with every woman in the city) since high school. They didn't even need to come out as gay or non-binary because "the way they would recline into chairs with their legs wide open did that for them". I actually don't have words for how much I hate this line and how detrimental it is for non-binary people who aren't androgynous looking people who take up space like men so I'm just going to leave it there for you to reflect on.

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However, I’d say this book was a bit confused about what it wanted to do. It was almost like two books in one: the first book describing Eartha’s sexual awakening as a bisexual woman, breaking the cycle of abusive relationships in her family; while the second narrative focuses on her journey on social media and the perils of the internet. There were also these parts called the “director’s notes” where the narrator panned out a camera on Eartha, or the situation unfolding, which I didn’t think worked that well.

However, the writing was choppy and hard to read. The plot holes and pacing were all over the place, like I get that Eartha went viral but then the amount of followers she was gaining and/or losing per week and the "perks of influencer life" she was receiving in the amount of time that seemed to pass made no sense. And I couldn't tell if Given was meant to be poking fun at the "all men are trash" feminists or what, but man vs. woman language made me really uncomfortable and it sort of felt like Rose using they/them pronouns was just thrown in to soften the "all men are trash, women are best" language. Like people perform gender in all sorts of ways but Rose very much felt written as a butch lesbian who's pronouns got changed at the last minute. Is there really anything else to say? Florence Given introduced Florence Given into Florence Given’s literary universe. The final act of girlbossification. AND SHE CALLED HERSELF “COOL”. In 2018, she launched a petition to cancel Netflix's controversial fat-shaming series 'Insatiable', it gained over 300,000 signatures in a matter of days. The story became global news and she appeared on many news networks across the US and UK, as well as being interviewed for various publications including Huffington Post and Grazia.This book was a mess. On paper, it should have been really compelling. Using modern social media as a way to explore the Jekyll and Hyde themes of duality, public life vs. private life, and addiction while also talking about what it's like to come into bisexuality "later" in life, like on paper this should have been a great story. Eartha finds fame online on Wonder Land, a social media app where users can create an online persona that represents their dream self, but she soon realises that being a viral sensation isn't as glamorous and exciting as it first seems. it’s like florence given looked up struggles of bisexual women and instead of portraying them with any kind of complexity she turned them into a caricature that had me (a bisexual woman who understands the source of the problems she was trying to portray here) rolling my eyes. like there is literally a scene in this book where the main character makes out with a man and some random girl bursts into the room, films her and then yells at her how she is a fake queer woman (the internet later on agrees with her and cancels eartha lmao) and then the next second the dude eartha made out with tells her that he thinks that women having sex with each other is hot but that he doesn’t want anything to do with her if she would date women and is disgusted by her bisexuality. i can tell that florence given really thought that she was a genius for touching upon three issues bisexual women face at one when, in reality, she only turned them into a joke by exaggerating this scene to no end.