I have really been into books about blogging and vlogging lately. In fact, Tash Hearts Tolstoy is one of the my favourite and The War Blog is a very close second. Highly recommend.

Where do I even start with this utter catastrophe?!

„The War Blog” follows Crystal Rose, a musically gifted teenaged girl living in Alaska with her grandparents and younger brother JD. Abandoned by her drug-addicted parents, she has lived with resentment her whole life. When she finds out that her mother’s lifestyle choices were probably the result of her being raped in high school and her inability to cope with that, with the help of her crush Kato, she launches a manifesto blog that declares war against rape culture and sexism.

While the premise of the book being empowerement of women standing up against permanent objectification was a great idea that could have been built upon in a fantastic way, it sadly sank under its weight. This book tried so, SO. VERY. HARD. and ultimately it just tried too hard. There’s this saying, I believe, that too many cooks spoil the broth. That was the case with this story, only there weren’t cooks, just ingredients, bits and pieces the author wanted to introduce that instead of overwhelming in a profound way caused confusion to run rampant throughout this entire thing.

Sadly, there weren’t moments I enjoyed in this. With massive pacing and structure issues, random and unnatural sounding dialogue, lack of smooth transition between scenes, ill-paced information dumps, it just read badly. There was a plethora of (side? secondary? I don’t know what the hell they were, to be honest!) characters whose names I started to write down at some point. All in a failed attempt at making sense of… well, mostly the point of them. Why were they there? They all read the same to me. Everyone was either abused as a child/teenager and therefore turned to drugs and/or alcohol. Or they were the result of drug-addled parents and suffered with drug-induced illnesses. I don’t believe it was ever said that past or ongoing abuse made them turn to something that would numb the pain. There was just an equation mark put between sexual abuse and drug addition. Which is, mind, often the case. That one results in another. Just not in a way this book would led you to believe.

Instead of empowering anyone this book made me, as a woman, feel compared to a doll that can be „fed drugs by men” in order to be become compliant and abused more. That phrase was everywhere in this book and it gave me so much whiplash I would have DNF-ed if it wasn’t an ARC I wanted to finish and properly review.
Am I to understand that if I like wearing make-up and looking good I stand chance at being fed drugs by a man who will abuse me until my life ends on a sad high-speed limit road where I’ll crash driving under the influence? Goddamn! Not that I wear make-up everyday but I do like wearing clothes I consider nice, so I should surely be dead by now, right?
To add insult to injury (and perhaps I should have led with that because it literally occured in like chapter 1 or 2!), the main character herself, the self-proclaimed warrior for feminism, uses slut-shaming and body-shaming language. Case in point, when presented with the truth behind her mother’s life-long addition problems and the fact she used to have „many boyfriends”, she reacts by saying: „so Mom was a slut?”. Which, come the fuck on! I would have laughed had it been funny. It wasn’t. There is no eureka moment, either. There is no Crystal thinking back to that moment and reflecting, realizing she spoke out of turn and no woman, no matter what lifestyle she leads, deserves to be called by the „s” or „w” word. Trust me when I say both were liberally used throughout this entire novel.

This book had it backwards. I feel like it took upon itself to explore the opoid epidemic issue the US has been struggling for some years now but threw at it so many other components (like heavy drinking among Alaskan Natives) while failing to connect it all in a way that would work, make sense, make the reader go ‘ahhh’. Instead I was mostly going ‘ughhh’, rolling my eyes, wanting the torture of reading it to end, swiftly. I reckon that a non-feminist reader would think us all raging lunatics if this book was their only source material. And they still do so! So trust me when I say this book is NOT feminist. It doesn’t empower anyone. It merely scratches the surface but the conclusions it draws are misplaced or just plain false.

I could go on and on about all the things that made this into a bad novel. On top of what I have mentioned, there was using rape as something that occurs as often as walking your dog and we are talking here about a relatively small town and our source material is said town and its residents. Abuse is everywhere. It is. But it doesn’t come out the next day in. EVERY. SINGLE. INSTANCE. It doesn’t advertise itself as such, either.
There were also summaries of events that should have been described. Everything was dry and lacking sense or layers. Gosh, what I wouldn’t give for anything in this novel to be multi-dimensional and layered! Nothing was.

Please don’t read this. It’s a waste of time. The idea was great but everything else fell through in a sad, pathetic way I don’t ever want to revisit again.

**massive thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review**

I had to DNF this book, unfortunately. I got through the first few chapters really excited because I loved the concept, however I was quick to realize that I wasn't going to make it through the whole book.
Crystal seemed way too naive for me to take her seriously when discussing topics that should be serious. She was the main issue I had with the book and after a while I just had to put it down because I couldn't follow her point of view anymore when the story seemed to jump too quickly from one point to another.

A young adult novel with 8 original accompanying songs available online. Great concept, poor execution. I had high hopes for “The War Blog” but felt that the writing wasn't up to scratch. The overall impression is of it having been written by an adult who isn't down with the kids as much as he thinks he is. As such, some of the words and phrases jarred. Difficult for a man to take on feminist themes and, unfortunately, Sobey hasn't managed to pull it off. We need allies, just not ones whose writing displays an obsession with “boobs”, particularly in YA fiction. Example “Her massive boobs bounced with every step, accentuated by a scooped neckline that couldn't help but reveal cleavage.” We have a way to go, womenfolk! Also, I still have no idea how Eugene's eyes changed from brown to blue??

Going into this book, I hadn't realized that it was written by a man. This changes perspective for me, because as a woman, it's often more painful than anything to try and read a book trying its very hardest to be a feminist read and pinpoint all the important bits of the feminist movement from the point of view of a teenaged girl. Both of these things are things men know close to nothing about, and I think we need more novels focused on feminism, written by women, written by those who experience the oppression that feminism fights to protect every day, and no matter how many men consider themselves feminists, they just have not and can not experience feminism in the way that is needed for a concept of a novel such as this one, much less any novel primarily focusing on feminist concepts.
After reading many a bad view for this book, I decided to still give it a try rather than giving up before having read it, who knows, maybe I would end up enjoying it. This was not the case, though, and I didn't even make it very far into the book, so I can't give the book as a whole a very accurate rating.
First of all, the dialogue is clunky and amateur, the heavy/triggering content doesn't even wait 10 pages before it's already being laid on thick, so I can't even imagine what the pacing for the rest of the book must be like, and when the topic of rape came up, the writing and the dialogue just sounded too much like a man trying too hard to convince you that he knows all about how detrimental it is, one of the characters even says something along the lines of "its not her fault, it's man's fault" which wasn't really followed by anything or really warranted in the first place during this conversation. It just struck me as someone trying too hard to convince you that he gets it! He gets feminism! He gets why rape is bad! Where are his brownie points for writing this?! God, just, reading a book you already know is written by someone who doesn't know the extent of what they're even talking about is such a cringy experience. Everything that had anything to do with sexual assault in this book was just written in a way that didn't give any indication this person has experienced the repercussions that so many women have and do on a daily basis. So that is why I just couldn't give this book any more time of day.

This was unfortunately just a bit disappointing for me. I was excited to read about the setting (I've never read a book set in Alaska before) but the execution just wasn't good enough. What should have been an empowering feminist novel with a compelling plot ended up just being cliched and boring. I feel like it was just too similar to other feminist YA books for my liking, borrowing a lot of plot points and the original ideas not being fleshed out enough to help the plot.

Well this was a big yikes

When requesting The War Blog I didn't know this was written by a man, I kinda assumed it was a woman when I started, but when I found out it was written by a man I had a lightbulb moment because um yeah that explains a lot. Not saying that a man can't write a good feminist book! They can! But this guy can't!

I have a lot of thoughts and my mind is all over the place, so let's turn this into a list review.

- First of all, the writing was really bad. I wasn't surprised to find out the author had never written a book before, because that was pretty obvious. The War Blog needs an incredible amount of editing, especially when it comes to the pacing, which honestly gave me whiplash. Everything was happening all at once and so very fast it was hard to keep track. Conversation topics changed within seconds and were brought up unnaturally, characters showed up out of nowhere... Actually, pretty much everything came out of nowhere. It's not funny how many notes my ARC has saying '??? WHERE DID THIS COME FROM' There are no natural transitions anywhere. I often also found myself quite lost and wondering if I had missed something? The fact that there are so many characters also didn't help. I could barely keep up with who was who, and I read most of this in a day.

- The dialogue was so cringeworthy and unnatural. For example:

''You are staying tonight?''
''Yeah. My usual spot in the guest bedroom, where I've slept more than half my life.''

??? Crystal knows that?? She was there?? It's her house?? This is all just for the benefit of the reader but it felt so forced. Who talks like that? Why would you mention that? I wrote like this when I was nine y'all

- Events were also just,, summed up a lot? Making the writing very dry (which it already was tbh) and there was no emotion in the writing at all. I honestly didn't care what happened.

- Crystal's grandmother hugs Kato and that's the exact moment Crystal decides to describe her grandmother's past beauty?? Like what??

- This!! Is!! Not!! A!! Feminist!! Book!! Crystal slutshames and bodyshames and there's emphasis on girls and women's bodies, especially their breasts which felt very odd to me (there's a scene where a girl puts two erases in her shirt on her nipples?? And it's supposed to be funny??) until I found out it was written by a man

- When Crystal's grandmother tells her Crystal's mom had many boyfriends, the first thing Crystal says is 'so Mom was a slut?' like jfc

- There's also this wonderful quote: ''Maybe she fought her childhood trauma by acting the tough girl. So why did she choose pink underwear to flaunt?'' (earlier she bent down which revealed her thong) Like are you kidding me? She also shamed another girl for wearing thight leggings and her little sister for wearing a tank top. Crystal doesn't support other girls at all, unless they fit a certain image.

- Crystal's grandmother also says that 'there's no getting through this' about sexual assault and rape, and this is never addressed. Personally I really don't find this a good message to send to young girls. I get where she's coming from and why she says this, but at no point is this message debunked and is it shown that you can get through an awful, traumatic event like sexual assault and/or rape, that you can get better.

- Crystal tells Kato that her fighting back against rape culture is 'different than advocating for Natives. This will be an attack on what most people consider normal' - um, I'm pretty sure racists think the way they treat Natives is normal? It just really rubbed me the wrong way, as if Crystal's fight is harder than Kato's.

- A lot of the women in this novel are in abusive relationships, which Crystal doesn't understand. I quote: ''I could never understand why battered women stayed with their abusers. Maybe Angie had no sense of worth apart from her man. I felt very sorry for her.'' Like fuck off? I can't even express the anger I felt when reading this.

- Crystal also kept on outing her best friend which she's never called out for

- Crystal's brother tells her she could never be a cheerleader because she's too skinny and NO ONE calls him out for that?

- It was also very uncomfortable to read how Crystal, a white girl, decided to criticise sexism in Native culture and I just don't think it was called out enough? To me it reeked of White Saviour Syndrome. I can't speak for Natives of course, but I did want to mention it in my review.

First of all, the writing was sub-par. I wouldn’t necessarily call it bad, but it didn’t blow me away either. There were several instances where I thought some heavy editing should of been done, but clearly wasn’t. The story starts off a bit too quickly and the pacing is pretty odd. A lot gets packed into each day which makes the story feel too chaotic.

Second of all… this was an extremely upsetting book. I was hopeful that Sobey would use this opportunity to do good for the topic of sexism, misogyny, and sexual assault, but instead this was peppered with some very offensive content. There are a lot of instances of rape/near rapes in this, which isn’t really unrealistic (we’ve all seen the stats), but every instance is used as a tool for the story. One girl gets assaulted by her boyfriend and the whole thing is given a couple pages about bad the MC feels. There are also several times when one of the boys in this story attempts to force himself on the MC and while the whole town knows about it, it’s put completely aside unless the author needs to bring it back up for two seconds. Now, I know that sexual assault isn’t taken nearly as seriously as it should be, but if this is supposed to be a story about girls and boys rising against rape culture, why on earth is no one taking what’s happening seriously!? Even the MC herself sweeps it under the rug.

On top of this, there is a huge portrayal of rape victims being drug addicts. Whether they were addicted before and that was the cause (I know, it’s infuriating to me, too), or they became addicted afterwards to ease their pain, practically every single woman in this story has or is addicted to drugs or alcohol. At one point the MC points out that since she’s not addicted to drugs, rapists have to find other ways to demean her (like by ridiculing her body). Also, most of the women who have been assaulted have absolutely disastrous lives afterwards, and everybody says, “Oh it’s because she was raped”. Literally. A lot of problems can come from the PTSD after being sexually assaulted. Trust me, I know. But every single rape victim is not going to succumb to a drug-induced haze to get through with the remainder of their lives. I judge no one for how they cope or handle their pain, but it’s a very ugly stereotype that I didn’t think any sexual assault victim would appreciate.

Sobey also seems to have some weird complex where he wants to bring attention to sexual assault but still demeans women. It was super weird to be in the middle of this story and to keep seeing the words “slut” and “whore” thrown around. AND NOT IRONICALLY. The words weren’t being used by men to fuel hatred. They were literally being used by the main character as just a passing thought!! Someone please explain to me how that makes absolutely any sense, since Crystal is supposed to be this strong warrior in the fight against assault. I guess that’s supposed to excuse her ugly thoughts about other women.

I could honestly go on and on with a rant about this book. It upset me a lot. At one point one of the characters even basically makes fun of the MC’s special needs brother to the family but nothing is ever made of it. He’s actually praised directly after for how smart he is. I tried to give it a chance and pushed past the half way mark hoping that at some point the story would pick up, but it never happened.

I'm going to contradict myself by saying I found the premise interesting, but the premise of the book is not believable enough for me. It's the Alaska aspect. It's not very plausible that this would ever happen to a girl in the remote land of Alaska. My suspension of disbelief is not enough;however, I do believe anyone who can find the premise true, and there will be numerous, will enjoy this one. The story is lively and well written. The characters are likeable and entertaining. If you are fine with Alaska, it's a great read. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Sadly The War blog didn't do much for me, I found it quite preachy and I found Crystal far to unrealistic for a 17 year old girl.
I couldn't finish the book.

This one just didn’t work for me. It changed scenes too quickly and that lessened the impact of the subject matter and the chance to form attachments to the characters. I’m afraid I didn’t like Crystal that much. I found her patronising. And while I applaud books that attempt to open a dialogue about rape culture the way women and girls experience it, I have yet to be convinced (on reading a fair few books by men on the subject) that a male author can really do the subject justice. Far better to look at the way rape culture affects boys and at male rape if you’re a male author, perhaps? Anyway it was a miss for me but others may find it hits the spot for them.

First of all, thanks to NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for approving my request and sending me an eARC in exchange for a honest review.
You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.


This is gonna be a difficult review, I already know.
That's because I really had high expectations on this book - over the last year I read several books about this topic and this one had great potential. So, when I read the blurb on NetGalley I made a request.

Something went wrong, somehow.
I don't know exactly what: maybe the pacing or the characters or maybe it was a bit of both.

There's too much happening, I got the feeling I was suffocating and I hate to write what I'm about to write because I'm a female and I know there's so much we keep silent about because we're ashamed, but I found a bit unrealistic how every girl or woman Crystal came across has been raped.
Also, for a book with the purpose to go against female objectification, it sure dwells on bodies' description before anything else.

I really wanted to like this book, but the pacing is too fast and conversations abruptly start and then end the same way, some characters change personality so fast you get whiplash - I would've liked to know some of them better, to see more the one-dimensional characters, but there's too much happening and so little space and time to do so.

On a general note, I liked Crystal even if she sometimes got on my nerves when it seemed she was so perfect to never do anything wrong. But I liked her songs - the trauma that we don't see in the book it shows in her lyrics.

I'm really sorry about the rating because this book wanted to communicate a great message, but I'm disappointed by its execution.

Have to admit I did not like the title or the cover but the description made me read this. Great book to read, showing courage and strength.

Premise: Crystal Rose is the product of drug-addicted, abusive parents. She lives with her grandparents, who've raised her when those same drug-addicted parents abandoned her.

One day she starts a blog that calls out female objectification and sexualization. This leads to her and her family going into hiding while her abusive date follows them?

Yeah, it didn't work for me. The premise was strong at the beginning and then 48% of the way in, the book took a nose-dive for the worst. There were so many parts of the plot that seemed undeveloped. For example, Crystal has the idea that her father is dangerous, she sees him spying on her, and then she goes off with a friend to a performance. Uh what?

I mean congratulations to the author on this first published novel and for taking g advantage of NaNoWriMo but no.

Thanks NetGalley and Black Rose writing for this ARC.

Poorly written with too much plot and zero pacing. I appreciate that Glen Sobey is trying to shine a light on the experiences of girls in native Alaskan communities, but I feel like he might have done a better job of this by encouraging a young native woman to write a novel rather than writing one himself. There is good intent here, particularly regarding the early sexualization of young girls and the damages that causes, but the deployment is clumsy and at times it's not clear if the persistent description of every female character's chest is critiquing the culture or adding to it.

I want to start by saying that I really liked the idea of this book. The premise was promising, and I was really excited to read a book like this, especially in the current political climate and with the#metoo movement and everything going on right now. But I think this just wasn't the story I was expecting. Or maybe it was the writing style. Or the characters. Or...everything, really?

This book was just...too much. There was just too much going on at all times. the book was moving too fast, constantly shifting from one thing to another, conversation starting in the middle of other conversations, characters all over the place, everything happening at once. While I understand that the point of everything was to show how every woman has had to deal with the male gaze and rape culture at some point, it seemed like almost toooo much to have ever single woman come out and say they've been raped. And also for some characters to randomly, so candidly, burst out with secrets they've held on to for years.

The characters were all interesting, though perhaps if there had been less of them so we could get to know some of them a little better, it would have worked better. There were just too many people, doing too many things, saying too much, all at once.

And then everything with Kato. I just...don't even know. I don't even know how to talk about that part of the story.

Familial plot twists and the back and forth surrounding them...also a little too much. Basically the moral of the story is that this book was too much for me. It was an interesting idea, and I applaud the attempt to try to fight back against rape culture, but I think it needed to be handled a little more delicately.

I couldn't get this into this book. Personally to me the writing was too fast paced. I didnt care much for the main characters and it felt flat to me.

A 2.5 starrer probably...

I really wanted to enjoy this book because I think we need more feminist YA novels which take on the sexism and rape culture that is so prevalent in the current society. This book tries to give voice to that anger that girls are feeling more and more everyday, and appreciate the author for trying, but the execution is definitely not done well. The writing feels very choppy, there are a lot of issues with continuity between scenes, there are too many characters and their stories which are hard to keep track of and also difficult to empathize with, because we never do spend a lot of time going into depth about their feelings and trauma.

I liked the songs that Crystal writes and I will definitely be listening to them because they capture the tone of the book well. I wish the remaining book could also have been equally good.

This book, set in Alaska, follows the story of Crystal Rose, a seventeen year old girl living with her grandparents and her younger brother. When a secret from the past is revealed it seems like she no longer knows who to trust, as her life has been built on a lie. Aside from all this she is dealing with high school life, with all the teasing, bullying and misogyny that can sometimes entail. Determined to take back control of at least one aspect of her life, she sets up the WAR blog, a feminist platform dedicated to fight back against female objectification with the help of her long time friend and crush, Kato, who is struggling with a secret of his own.
This book was quite a mixed bag for me. I really enjoyed the setting, and learning more about the customs of the indigenous Alaskan people. I also really liked Crystal as a character, her feistiness and determination to stand up for herself make her a really good role model for teen readers. However I really had an issue with how almost all the female characters were described, especially in a book that seems to decry objectification, Virtually every single female character had the size of her breasts described at one point or another, and it just seemed very odd, and out of keeping with the message it seems like the book was trying to convey.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.