ARC Review: Don't Read the Comments by Eric Smith

This was a sweet and surprising read, a modern take on gaming and the troll community surrounding it.

Divya is a top streamer on Glitch and works hard on it not for the fame and glory but to support herself and her mother after her parents rocky divorce. Diyva is of Indian descent and a girl gamer so naturally that makes her the perfect target for trolls on the internet who feel that she doesn’t deserve her success and are out to make both her online and real life hell.

Aaron lives in Philadelphia with his parents and younger sister and longs to write for games but his parents wish for him to become a doctor and will only pay for college if he chooses to follow in their footsteps.

Divya and Aaron’s paths collide on the online game Reclaim the Sun and they battle both anon hate and lurking monsters via oculus.

Absolutely loved this book. It was nerdy, funny, and could definitely relate to it in all kinds of ways. I’m not a streamer and my blog isn’t big enough to get hate comments but uh, I am pretty sassy on twitter and have been suspended once , twice, perhaps five times for bickering with the trolls so I get it. Have I learned from this??? Absolutely not. In fact it fuels me.It’s never gotten to the point where I’ve been doxxed thank god but we all know about that and how crazy and hateful people can be. Especially towards women and women of color. I really loved how this book remarked on that because it is true that women have it so much worse than men.

I also relate because I’m a gamer and I’m raising my own sassy girl gamer and although I don’t online game because I tend to hate people I will not be taking shit from anybody lmao. Life is way too short and tbh WHO HAS THE TIME? WHOMST I MAY ASK YOU?

The dynamics of the characters were great and there were a lot of laughs in this as well. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Thanks very much to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy of my ARC. All opinions are my own.