Gamer Girl by Mari Mancusi

     Maddy's parents have just divorced and she has had to move in with her Grandmother in a new town. This means starting a new school without her friends. She is labeled the freak.
     Maddy is a great artist and takes comfort in her manga drawings. Her father gets her an online game called Fields of Fantasy which she loves and plays often to escape her problems. Online she can be anyone she wants to be, so she becomes an Elfin maiden named Allora. She makes friends on the game as well.

     Maddy is your average protagonist. Her parents are divorced, she has to move to a new school and all of that. What makes her different from the many other books of this sort is her love of manga and her obsession with her online game. You don't generally see too many novels about an obsession with online games, but Mancusi does well to present it. Maddy loves that game and it almost seems to become an extension of who she is, in her mind. She plays it all of the time, thereby avoiding having to feel anything besides what Allora would feel. She logs on constantly to play: instead of her homework, when she gets into it with her mom, or even when she misses her dad.

     I really do feel sorry for Maddy. I know what it's like to change schools and leave all of your friends behind. Regardless, she still seems a little pathetic. It is almost like she doesn't want to make friends to show her parents how horrible a thing they did to her. I like how Mancusi developed Maddy, I'm not saying I don't because I did love Maddy, but I wanted her to try a bit more to make some new friends instead of being all woe is me.

     I do have to say that as good as Gamer Girl was, it was too predictable. There was not nearly enough suspense. I knew what was going to happen pages before it did. The writing, however, kept me reading because it really was good.  All said and done, Gamer Girl was pretty interesting and well-written.

     Rating: 6

     Find Gamer Girl at Amazon.