4.5/5: ‘Eliza and Her Monsters’ is a Young Adult, Mental Health Contemporary by Francesca Zappia; Eliza Mirk is the anonymous creator of the wildly popular web-comic Monstrous Sea, under the pseudonym LadyConstellation. One day, the secret is exposed, creating endless hardship. Zappia offers an honest and thoughtful portrayal of a character with anxiety here and some interesting perspective on what it means to create and engage within a fan community. Eliza’s online friends are given as much, if not more, weight than her real-life friends in a way that will feel authentic to anyone who’s ever made friends through social media whom they may never meet in person. Eliza and Her Monsters sounds like it will be a story about a comic and a secret identity–maybe with a little romance. Instead, it’s really a story about connection within fandom and finding your thing and your people but losing yourself along the way. It’s also about fixing that–a lesson Eliza learns throughout the course of the novel. Eliza’s first-person narration is interspersed with excepts from Monstrous Sea fanfiction, message boards, emails, and illustrations of parts of the Monstrous Sea comics done by Zappia. This story is character driven but also fast-paced as Eliza’s world slowly starts to expand with help from Wallace. Eliza struggles with anxiety as she pushes against the limitations of what she feels capable of managing versus what she actually wants. The one complaint is the relationship between Eliza and Wallace towards the conclusion of the novel. Throughout their friendship, Wallace is working to novelize the Monstrous Sea comic–something that Eliza loves and supports. After she is outed, Wallace reveals that he has a book deal with a publisher for that novelization once it’s completed. He needs Eliza’s permission which she readily gives. But he also needs Eliza to finish the comic so that he can finish the novelisation. Something she feels incapable of doing in the face of everyone knowing her name and watching her, ready to pounce. Aside from issues of these publishing logistics, it felt out of character for Wallace to suddenly negate Eliza’s concerns in the face of his own ambition. Every other aspect of their relationship was sweet, but this thread with the publication of Monstrous Sea was frustrating at best and problematic at worst. Despite this, it was a true dedication to fandoms – Fantastic!