After seeing that this book was compared to the works of Sophie Kinsella and Stephanie Perkins I had high hopes. I now realise they were too high as this book did not capture my heart in the same way.

I’ve long been a fan of Nicola Doherty’s books and I requested Lola Offline from NetGalley ages ago and for some reason I didn’t get round to reading it until just recently. Like Doherty’s other books, I really enjoyed Lola Offline.

Lola Offline tells the story of Delilah who has fled her normal life to live in Paris under the moniker of Lola. Delilah is fleeing from a mistake that she has made that ended up making her internet famous for all the wrong reasons. 

Rather than embracing her mistake and dealing with the fall out she opts to hide. But in a world saturated by social media you begin to wonder can a person really ever truly hide from their past?

Nicola Doherty’s story really hit a nerve with me for two reasons. The first being because I wrote a blog post once that ended up getting a ridiculous number of views within the space of 24 hours. Now don’t get me wrong, for someone who blogs that is generally a good thing, however, the post was not about books it was about a health condition I had and I was very unsettled by the amount of people that read it. I got over it but for a good week I felt really unnerved. The second reason is that I work in a high school and the amount of problems that we encounter on a daily basis because of Instagram or Facebook is ridiculous. The insidiousness of social media is becoming more and more prevalent and Doherty addresses this very matter. Personally, I think she is brave to do so. If just one member of her target audience of young adults reads this book and thinks about something before they post it on social media then Doherty has made a massive impact.

Lola Offline by Nicola Doherty is available now.

For more information regarding Nicola Doherty (@nicoladoherty_) please visit www.nicoladohertybooks.com.

For more information regarding Hachette Children’s Group (@HachetteKids) or Orion Children’s Books (@the_orionstar) please visit www.hachettechildrens.co.uk.

A really relevant and thought provoking YA book about a girl who's mistake on twitter goes viral. This shows how someones whole life can be affected by one mistake. A must read!

Sometimes I love to read books that I know won't take me long and they'll be enjoyable. I thought this would be the case with Lola Offline and it really was. Lola Offline was a quick and easy to read book which will be perfect for fans of teenage fiction, especially those into social media.

It centres around Delilah. Delilah makes a stupid mistake online (like so many of her age and beyond!) she jokes about something and it is taken seriously. Delilah is labelled a racist and shunned by her peers. Delilah decides that she wants to start afresh somewhere. She moves to Paris. A fresh start. Delilah now goes by the name of Lola, leaving her past behind so that her new friends can't google her and find out about her past that shames her. Lola meets some new friends and falls in love with Paris. However, Lola's life isn't back on track as it doesn't take long for the truth to come out. Lola's new peers react in different ways. Lola (Delilah) really has to learn about herself and how she can be move on from her past and be genuinely happy once more.

I thought this was a decent read which highlighted the issues around social media. It's not just social media, sometimes words can be completely taken out of context even when they're vocalised.I think this is such an important read for the modern day teenager who can quite often spend a lot of their time on social media. It's about the perils of social media and how one comment can go viral easily and affect your life.

After Delilah makes a mistake online for all to see, she wants a fresh start somewhere new and away from all she knows so she decides to move, alone!

Now under the new name Lola, leaving all she knows behind and moving to Paris alone she meets Vee and Fletcher whilst still thinking about Jules, Nisha and Ellie, her old friends back home.

However, when students at this school find out just what was tweeted by her they react in many ways. Her new friends still like her whilst Tariq, her could become boyfriend needs space to go over things as culture and racial issues are bought into the mix...

A pleasant short read for teens, raising issues around social media backlash and how words can really hurt not just you.

Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

Such a believable story and incredibly contemporary featuring issues that could potentially affect any modern teenager. If you are a young adult, or have a young adult then this is worth reading, as it deals with after effects of when you make a mistake online and it goes viral. 

In Delilah Hoover's case, the level of notoriety she gained, left her feeling friendless, alone and in need of an escape. So she persuades her parents to let her go to an International boarding school in Paris, France, for her to study for the IB (International Baccalaureate) instead of her A-Levels. 

Not only does she change her country but she becomes Lola Maxwell, a girl with no social media accounts at all, and a fear that everyone at her new school will find out her biggest secret.  I loved seeing a boarding school in Paris, and meeting all the various children that go there.  

As Lola's time in Paris progresses, we are introduced to a variety of potential friends for her, each with their own personality quirks, and also we are shown Paris, not the major tourist attractions as such, but some of the hidden gems of the city too. 

I enjoyed seeing how Lola overcame her experience and starts to learn new things not only in her school subjects but also about herself too. She never was the most outgoing or popular sort of girl, has some geekish tendencies and as a result the way she copes is even more admirable. 

Although I'm an adult, I still found myself completely able to empathise with Lola and her predicament, possibly because you need to be so careful with social media or it can be a nightmare, that and I've always loved stories set in schools. 

Lola Offline is a captivating story that actually anyone who deals with social media could gain something from. 

Thanks to Orion and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

(I received an advance copy of this book for free. Thanks to Hachette Children's Group and NetGalley.)

“I’m changing my name. To Lola.”

This was a YA story about a girl who made a bad joke on twitter and got shunned for it.

I liked Lola/Delilah as a character, and I totally got why she felt the need to run away from everything that had happened to her. She came across as generally a nice person, and was even nice to her younger brother, so it was awful the way she felt her whole life had been affected by one mistake.

The storyline in this was about Lola running off to a boarding school in Paris and trying to make new friends, all whilst under the alias ‘Lola’, and I was really hoping that she would manage it. We got a little bit of romance, which was pretty low-key, but most of the story was about Lola’s new life in Paris, and trying to keep her real identity secret.

The ending to this was pretty good, and I was pleased that Lola learned to not run away from her problems. 
7 out of 10

'Lola Offline' is a novel about Delilah whose twit goes viral for all the wrong reasons turning her teenage life into nightmare. Apart from many moments which are rightfully making us more aware of drawbacks of social networking there's a lot about being tolerant and careful in our judgements, which is all well from my point of view as an educator. There's one big BUT that made reading of this book a lot less pleasurable - I couldn't stop comparing it to another book with a plot similar to 'Lola Offline'. 'Anna and the French Kiss' by Stephanie Perkins also describes a story of a teenage girl who starts studying in Paris and falls in love with a guy, who at the very beginning of the book, is seariously involved in a relationship with 'a perfect girl' (who is out of the picture at some point and guess what? yes, Delilah or rather Lola and the guy fall in love with each other).