Book Review – Caitlin Moran – How To Build A Girl

My name’s Johanna Moran. I’m fourteen and I’ve just decided to kill myself.

I don’t really want to die, of course! I just need to kill the old me, and build a new girl. Dolly Wilde will be everything I want to be, and more! But as with all best coming-of-age stories, it doesn’t exactly go to plan…

I must say, this book is the only book that has taken seventeen chapters to get me gripped.

I was excited to read it because I had heard so many good reviews from it and on the front of the book it had a review from Helen Fielding saying it was ‘Laugh out loud funny’, as she is my favourite author I thought I’d give it a go.

It starts with a girl, she’s young and is laying next to her baby brother in her double bed, masturbating. To say I was shocked is to say the least. Within the first 30 words I already felt that the book was too inappropriate to be funny.

As reading the book I found out that it was a common theme that Johanna would be doing this action, something that I don’t particularly like to read about in a book.

As I have said, it took me seventeen chapters to like the book, this is where she stopped talking about sex so much and started to get into the story of Dolly Wilde, and that’s what I wanted to really read. This is where she becomes a regular on D&ME the music magazine.

I will give credit where its due, Moran is a good author; I was just only interested in the last nine chapters of the book. There were plenty of times that I wanted to give up on it but I have this thing where I have to finish a book that I’ve started, just in case it decides to get better.

Overall I wouldn’t say this was the book for me, it was a very obvious coming-of-age book that for my tastes were a bit obscene.

However, if you want to get this book and judge for yourself, check it out on Amazon.

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Elle Hache.