Fugly</i> is going to be a super polarising book, there's no two ways about it.



If you are a reader who needs to like an MC in order to engage with a book, then this is not the book for you.



Similarly, if you are not willing to engage with the topics this book discusses - fat-shaming, body image issues, bullying, sexual harassment amongst others - from the grim and grimy negative origins rather than a place of looking back positively, then this may also not be the book for you.



There's a lot of hand holding in YA lately depicting plus sized characters positively (A very GOOD THING) and immediately calling out any fat shaming (also a very GOOD THING) but this book is not a hand holder. It's an important conversation about learning to value yourself in order to value other people. Therefore, if you find an MC making fatphobic and negative comments about herself and other people triggering, you may wish to think hard about whether to read it.



<i>Fugly</i> is an incredibly honest, no-holds-barred look at what happens when the oppressed turn vicious. Beth Soames spent almost all of her school life alternately bullied and ignored. She doesn't fit the perceived norm for what society considers attractive. She's shy and suffers from anxiety, and she has a very unhealthy relationship with food. As in, she uses it to fill the emptiness caused by her own emotional isolation. Her parents are recently divorced, pitching her mother into a depressive state complete with idiopathic pain, and her fourteen-year-old brother is playing truant from school and becoming emotionally abusive. Full of poisonous anger and self loathing, Beth strikes back at the world which she perceives as constantly rejecting her, by donning her internet persona and trolling the Beautiful People. Those pretty, popular girls who post pictures of themselves for the approval of the adoring masses. The ones who need to be taken down a peg or two.



Beth starts off as a thoroughly unlikeable character. The things she says and does are often not merely mean but actively malicious and hateful. From the moment you first meet her, she shuts the reader out of her confidence - rejecting you before you have a chance to reject her. But gradually, as the reader follows her story, she opens up and reveals more and more. I'm not sure this increased intimacy - a brilliant ploy by Waller to play with our sympathies and establish character btw - ever really makes her likeable. There's a strong impulse in the reader to despise her for her actions - both for the hateful things she does online and for not valuing or standing up for herself irl. However it does make her more understandable. Her narrative is compulsively readable and she starts to show flashes of far better personality traits once she starts to make friends.



And that's the crux, I think. Very few of us are designed to be completely alone and most people start to go more than slightly peculiar when forced to endure alienation and isolation. Beth's case is extreme. She has internalised all the hateful and casually cruel things ever said to her, as well as all the societal disapproval constantly broadcast to people of her shape and size, and instead of analysing and rejecting it, she repeats it. I think this is where <i>Fugly</i> might be jarring for some people. Beth genuinely believes to start with, that she is all the things that have been said of her. How many of us at 18 were good at listening for the meaning rather than just the words? Or at separating out tasteless and non-intentionally hurtful comments from genuine malice? (A lesson we could all do with a bit more of tbh considering the current trend of being eager to be offended in some quarters.) We all internalise both approval and disapproval, whether it's implied or explicit and it's only with experience that we learn to use a filter and reject harmful rubbish. It's very hard to value yourself when through no particular fault of your own, you have never fit a narrow set of parameters for societal approval.



That being said, there is no excuse for what Beth does. She knows that unconsciously at the start and very consciously later. The examples of trolling we see are genuinely horrific. Beth's actions are uncomfortably understandable even to someone who has never succumbed to the temptation to attain some power by taking it from someone else in some form. This is not a gratuitous look through the eyes of a loveable anti hero. This is a deconstruction of internalised hatred. The introduction of Tori - another troll - ups the stakes. I really don't want to say too much there for fear of venturing into spoiler territory, so let's just say that there is a clear comparison between a friend who brings out all your worst impulses and a friend who shows you that you can be a better person.



Ultimately, Waller shows us that it's our choices that define us. Beth's choices are initially very bad but over the course of the book she learns that pushing her anger and frustration out onto the net is not merely harmful to other people, but diminishing to who she is and who she could be as a person. I was reminded of Anne Fine's <i>The Tulip Touch</i> which has very little in common with this book at all, save for a charismatic 'friend' leading the MC into worse and worse acts of destruction. In that book, Fine makes the point of saying that in order to show kindness, we need to have experienced at least a little kindness directed at ourselves. Amy, a new friend from uni, should be one of the Beautiful People but she's also sweet and kind, and genuinely wants to befriend Beth. Beth's self-realisation is a slow one and is triggered largely because she is forced to consider that her preconceptions about how someone looks might be wrong. Which in turn forces her to consider that other people's preconceptions about her, and her acceptance of those opinions, might also be wrong.



A final word about Beth's home life - I don't think it's unreasonable for a young person who has been shoved into the role of responsible adult in a household to feel resentment about it. I doubt many people, children or otherwise, never have a single moment of feeling aggrieved at being forced to be the carer. Beth had a right to expect her mother to be a parent - to her younger brother if not to her - and instead she got no support at all. That's not to say she couldn't have handled it better but there was also no reason why she should have to.



I found <i>Fugly</i> compelling, shocking, horrifying and utterly addictive. The voice is amazing and honestly quite uncomfortable. The plot is fast paced and often tense. I finished it in two sittings. This is a taut, honest and challenging account about personal value, self knowledge and emotional understanding. Highly recommended.

This is a very dark book about an young girl who bullies others online after experiencing real life or in person bullying herself for many years. It's a dark topic, one that should be covered but I failed to see any positive come from the book. What lessens were learned? Thank you to Netgalley and Lerner Publishing Group for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

It was definitely an interesting read and I can see why it split opinions among reviewers. I actually thought it was very cleverly done. Yes, it took targeting someone she knew for Beth to move back from her trolling, but I don't think this negates the message. We are all much more likely to see the error of our ways if it's placed right in front of us.
This book helps readers see the harsh reality of trolling in a non-judgemental way. It doesn't preach, or teach falsehoods that people aren't mean. We all remember enough of adolescence to admit that. It just shows that in the long run, trolling doesn't really improve your life and it could hurt someone you like, so might as well not bother.
It was also funny, and easy to get into so i would say it was worth a read.

brutally honest and quirky from the very first page. This book had me laughing and (almost) crying.
I loved the writing style, the ease of how the pages turned due to the easy to read language and style.

The characters felt real, like they could be people that you know, people that you call friends, which makes this tale so much more hard hitting.

Fugly is like nothing I've read before. It's a dark and unflinching look at a viewpoint I've never given much thought: the internet troll. Being inside Beth's head means that this definitely isn't an easy read, but it's a unique and engrossing one.

Claire Waller develops Beth's character with such skill that it left me in a moral dilemma! Beth does, says and thinks some terrible, unforgivable things but also has redeemable qualities. It was also very clear why she did those things. Beth goes on such an interesting journey through the book and it was mainly character development that kept me gripped throughout.

I loved how complicated and well-drawn all of the characters in the book are. I could really picture even the most minor characters.

Another thing that stayed with me after reading this book is how vulnerable sharing things online can make us and the impact that online words can have on others. I knew all of these things (and would certainly never troll anyone) but I've never read a book that made me think so much about them.

This book tackles a lot of difficult subject matters, and as it's from Beth's perspective these aren't always communicated in a positive way. However, if you can stomach the tough subject matter, this is a brilliantly written and thought-provoking read.

I loved this book, it is something that could happen to anyone.
Beth a girl who doesn't feel like she fits in anywhere makes friend's online with Tori, they spend time together making other people feel bad about themselves.
Everyone at one point in time has felt bad about themselves, and I think this book is great at showing the other side to what can happen if you are trolling someone and living in the online life.
We all the capacity to do better and this book is great at showing that no matter what happens we need to help each other and just be nice.

This book isn't going to be for everyone.It is full of self-hate, bullying, mental health issues and our main character Beth has a huge 'F* The World' complex. She's hurting and uses that pain as an excuse to lash out and do terrible things. Fortunately for me though, overall, I ended up quite enjoying it. I found myself laughing out loud at many of Beth's inner thoughts (like referring to Amy's ability to chatter continually a 'superpower') and for the most part,
I enjoyed following her journey of personal growth. I also liked how the chapters were all #hashtags.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley!!

Unfortunately, this book didn't work for me. Maybe I'm too old for it. it just... didn't work.

This tops my list of worst books of all times. Seriously I have nothing good to say about it. But upon writing my review, I'm glad I'm not the only one who shares that same opinion. Don't waste your time is all I have to say.

That's my honest opinion.

Rating 0

I'm struggling to see how this book has any positives to it. Sure, we get to see life in the eyes of a troll but she doesn't really learn - she continues to blame other people for her choice to become a troll and be hateful to people. This book is filled with hate. Fatphobia, girl-on-girl hate, just plain unnecessary rudeness, bullying (and not just the main character being bullied - she constantly bullies her little brother and threatens him). I just don't get why it needed to be written. To warn against being a troll? To show that trolling is bad? To say that just because people are horrible to you, doesn't mean you should be horrible to others? The main character doesn't learn any of these things and I don't know about you, but I would say they're pretty damn obvious things. They don't need a whole book to say them.

*thank you to Netgalley, Claire Waller and Lerner Publishing Group for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review*


4 Stars.

TW: self harm, sexual assault, bullying, negative self talk.

Ohh my goodness what an amazing read this turned out to be! It was so interesting having the main character be a troll on the internet and reading about her this way, finding out why she does it. It was such a great idea for a story. I'd never really given it much thought before. Why does a person Troll? So this was a real eye opener and so interesting to read about from a Trolls point of view. I zoomed through it so fast because I wanted to know more and more. 

The main character Beth is a troll. Not in real life as she calls it, but on the internet she gets out all of her pent up anger and frustrations. She throws to others what she is feeling inside. All that anger over the years and this is how she deals with it because she doesn't have a clue how else to. Plus she believes that they, the beautiful people, truly deserve it. While doing this she meets another like minded person, Tori. They quickly become friends and eventually it grows to more. But while trolling the internet together, they target a particular person and things soon get out of control and lines are crossed. Having things gone too far, Beth gets a wake up call and that's where the story takes a turn.

There is so much going on with this story. So many layers. The characters are great. The way the story develops keeps the reader engaged, wanting more and wanting to find out how this ends. 

Truly a great story and what I think what makes it such a great read is because this is a real thing. This is so easily a story that could be based on a real story that it makes it so captivating with a touch of horror and creepiness to it. The internet these days is such a huge place but it comes with so many real problems. Such as Catfishing, trolling and much more. You really need to be careful while online and using social media and this book highlights the reasons for that in a really dark way.

Beth is one of those characters that people can relate to in different ways. Maybe it's her weight issues. The way she treats herself and talks to herself. Her family life issues. Her anger/self hatered. Or what it is she so desperately wants and needs but isn't getting in the right ways. Or maybe even her trolling.

The story is gripping and has a little twist near the end that I didn't see coming, but there were hints of it throughout the book which I like. It was a nice touch and an added bonus. I highly recommend this book if it sounds like one you would enjoy.

Thank you again to the author for an ARC of this.

18 year old Beth is a big girl. She always thinks the worst because people are always calling her fat and she has been bullied in the past. So bad that if you can'beat them join them.

That's right Beth is an internet troll, she picks on beautiful people and feeds into their insecurities.
Beth gets a kick out of this along with her passion for food.

However when an online partner in crime takes things a little too far. Beth witnesses first-hand the destruction that can be caused by bullying.

The story is told from Beth perspective, here we find out all about her life and what drove her to the horrible, vicious online troll. Beth does not realise just how much harm she is causing.

Definitely one you need to read. It covers all of the problems most of us face in life just put in a very well told story form.

Claire Waller’s Fugly establishes a believable and well-written young adult character — the book is sharp, entertaining, and explores identity wisely.