Blog Tour: Don’t Read the Comments by Eric Smith (Review)

Title: Don’t Read the Comments
Author: Eric Smith
Genre: YA Contemporary
Publication Date: January 28th, 2019
Hardcover
$18.99 USD, $23.99 CAD
Ages 13 And Up
368 pages

Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing for asking me to be a part of this tour! eARC provided by publisher through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

“Divya Sharma is a queen. Or she is when she’s playing Reclaim the Sun, the year’s hottest online game. Divya—better known as popular streaming gamer D1V—regularly leads her #AngstArmada on quests through the game’s vast and gorgeous virtual universe. But for Divya, this is more than just a game. Out in the real world, she’s trading her rising-star status for sponsorships to help her struggling single mom pay the rent.

Gaming is basically Aaron Jericho’s entire life. Much to his mother’s frustration, Aaron has zero interest in becoming a doctor like her, and spends his free time writing games for a local developer. At least he can escape into Reclaim the Sun—and with a trillion worlds to explore, disappearing should be easy. But to his surprise, he somehow ends up on the same remote planet as celebrity gamer D1V.

At home, Divya and Aaron grapple with their problems alone, but in the game, they have each other to face infinite new worlds…and the growing legion of trolls populating them. Soon the virtual harassment seeps into reality when a group called the Vox Populi begin launching real-world doxxing campaigns, threatening Aaron’s dreams and Divya’s actual life. The online trolls think they can drive her out of the game, but everything and everyone Divya cares about is on the line…

And she isn’t going down without a fight.” (Goodreads)

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Books-a-Million /Kobo / Indie Bound / Google Play

Eric Smith is an author, prolific book blogger, and literary agent from New Jersey, currently living in Philadelphia. Smith cohosts Book Riot’s newest podcast, HEY YA, with non-fiction YA author Kelly Jensen. He can regularly be found writing for Book Riot’s blog, as well as Barnes & Noble’s Teen Reads blog, Paste Magazine, and Publishing Crawl. Smith also has a growing Twitter platform of over 40,000 followers (@ericsmithrocks).

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I was really excited to be approved for this title because I am a gamer and thought the premise sounded awesome. There were some good topics discussed in this book and although I can’t talk about the racial issues, I can talk about being a female gamer.

I have been a gamer since my family got a super Nintendo back in the day. Since World of Warcraft came out, I have been a MMO gamer and have tried many different ones throughout the years. It was cool to see them mention a few and even older ones like Ultima. I have also played Call of Duty and I think that is where I have ran into the most trolls when it comes to me being a female.

I definitely could relate to Divya because of the way other gamers called her names. I have been called numerous ones just for being a girl. Divya always talked about not reading the comments and although its easy to do for the most part, it’s different when you can hear them say it like on Call of Duty. As for MMO gaming, I really haven’t ran into many issues because of my gender since they don’t know who is behind the screen unless I get into a chat like Discord. Of course, you will get the infamous troll that says, “girls don’t play videogames!” but it’s easy to ignore.

Divya stuck up for herself throughout the book and had friends and fellow gamers stand by her side. The gaming community can be a great community but just like any other, you will always have trolls. I liked this book’s take on it all and I thought it was done nicely.

As for the other characters, there wasn’t too much development for Divya’s and Aaron’s friends but I still thought they were good characters. Aaron isn’t a big gamer but is there to support Divya. He does face racism and I thought it was a good topic to include.

Another thing I liked about this book was the mention of bookstagram. I have one and the community is a great place to make friends and since this book mentions it maybe others will want to know what it is and take part in it!

Overall, I enjoyed this one and glad I got the chance to read a book about a topic that I am familiar with.

 

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