***This book review may contain spoilers.***

This was going to be a DNF. Mostly because the character annoyed me from the beginning. Mostly because I related so much. As a person who has social anxiety and had the same thoughts all the time, especially back in high school/college where it was so severe, it just brought me back to the old days. And I didn't want to reminisce. But I also have to acknowledge it. And reading a book wasn't going to change who I am. So I pummeled my way through. And man, this author really knows social anxiety. Really captured it well.

The main character Vicky loses her best friend. Her best friend moves away so she promised to be there for her but instead gets lost with her new crowd of friends and Vicky overhears a conversation where she hears Jenna (her best friend) call her pathetic with Jenna's new love interest Tristan. I mean, it's clear she's saying this because he's calling her lame for being so attentive. First of all, you should have known from that point Jenna, that he was no good for you. A best friend is a best friend. Pshhh. Second, I get the position where Jenna was in. It's also new people at a new school and you're trying your best to fit in. Anyways, of course Vicky, with her anxiety takes it literally and instead of confronting it, she creates a new persona on Instagram called Vicurious. Which ends up becoming Instagram famous and keeps avoiding Jenna through texts/phone calls. (Typical social anxiety behavior I would say. The author has this spot on).

All the while, Vicky starts gaining confidence as her page gets more and more famous. She starts liking this guy Lipton, who I have to admit was a really adorable character and was perfect for Vicky to help her build the confidence she needed without her best friend in the area. They had a lot of cute moments. He was just so adorbs.

I also loved how the book exemplified Vicky's relationship with her mom. Most of the time, a parent and a child are at different maturity levels, and the difficulty of communicating the lessons you already learned through time is something that all parents have to go through. At least I'd like to think so. It's nice that Vicky was finally able to talk to her mom about her anxiety and to talk about getting help.

"The way to overcome your fears is just to face it."

The overall theme of the book. One solution to anxiety. Continuous exposure. It was nice seeing Vicky grow as a character from not being able to say one word to somebody to being able to have full on conversations with people and sometimes not even acknowledging that she had. Time and continuous exposure always helps.

The Vicurious/Vicky Decker reveal was a sweet moment. The Vicurious instagram was created because of her best friend. And she gave up her anonymous identity to find her best friend again. Did the book ever answer if Marvo knew the whole time she was Vicurious. Did I miss that?Also, I didn't understand how Vicurious got to be so big? I get that some things just take off, but to me, it was just so sudden that didn't really make it real to me in my head.

Overall, it was good. The writing style made it an easy and fast read.

My Star Rating:3 out of 5 Stars