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papertraildiary's review
5.0
Great story, great writing, such an inspiration! Just gave this to a 12-year-old pal, and eager to hear what she thinks too. Keep writing, Suzanne!
cimorene1558's review
2.0
This is decent for what it is (a book about starting to become a teenager), but not my scene.
ipomoea's review
4.0
I recieved an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Jo is twelve, going on thirteen, and in the throes of all the adolescent horribleness that is attendant upon that age. At least she has a cool older brother to look up to and three good friends to struggle through with. Or she did, until one of her friends accuses her of writing something rude on her locker and then gleefully snubs her, dragging Jo's very best friend Stacy along with her and away from Jo when Jo thinks she needs her most. Because Jo's brother Zim (short for Zimmerman, as in Bob Dylan), is moving home with his unexpectedly pregnant girlfriend, Jennifer. If the friendship splitting and the family merging wasn't bad enough, Jo's fighting the demon of adolescence, combination acne. To comfort herself, she makes small edits on Wikipedia pages, using the world's encyclopedia as her confessional and diary.
I adored parts of this book. The ruthlessness and social climbing that can happen among teenagers was written well, along with the complicated relationship Jo has with her family, both blood and not. But the wikipedia parts, while I saw they related to the following section of text, were things I usually skipped over in my desire to read more of Jo's story. I would definitely suggest this to kids who are having a rough go of it with friendships, and possibly put it on reading lists for friendship/bullying/social circle issues.
Jo is twelve, going on thirteen, and in the throes of all the adolescent horribleness that is attendant upon that age. At least she has a cool older brother to look up to and three good friends to struggle through with. Or she did, until one of her friends accuses her of writing something rude on her locker and then gleefully snubs her, dragging Jo's very best friend Stacy along with her and away from Jo when Jo thinks she needs her most. Because Jo's brother Zim (short for Zimmerman, as in Bob Dylan), is moving home with his unexpectedly pregnant girlfriend, Jennifer. If the friendship splitting and the family merging wasn't bad enough, Jo's fighting the demon of adolescence, combination acne. To comfort herself, she makes small edits on Wikipedia pages, using the world's encyclopedia as her confessional and diary.
I adored parts of this book. The ruthlessness and social climbing that can happen among teenagers was written well, along with the complicated relationship Jo has with her family, both blood and not. But the wikipedia parts, while I saw they related to the following section of text, were things I usually skipped over in my desire to read more of Jo's story. I would definitely suggest this to kids who are having a rough go of it with friendships, and possibly put it on reading lists for friendship/bullying/social circle issues.
leahmichelle_13's review against another edition
4.0
Wikipedia is the font of all knowledge, and is usually my first port of call if I want to know about something - a celebrity, a TV show, a film, anything at all. It's great! So when I spotted Something Wiki on Netgalley, and learned that Jo was someone who regularly edited Wikipedia entries to mirror her own life situations. I was intrigued, and I couldn't wait to dive in to the novel.
Something Wiki was a younger novel that I expected - Jo and her friends are 12, and while they're not in my usual age-range, I really liked Jo. I found that her tale - where her rock star cool older brother ends up back in the family fold, with a pregnant girlfriend in two, and Jo's best friends suddenly don't feel like they're the best any more, and they're certainly not friendly.
Each chapter opens with an edited Wikipedia entry, and it took me a little while to realise what were the bits Jo edited, but I soon got in to it, and I found every Wikipedia entry was apt for the upcoming chapter, with Jo's chapters being very realistic. They were a super fun way to open up the chapter.
Jo was such a sweet narrator, too! I felt so sad for her to see that her "best" friends were deserting her, for reasons I still don't quite understand. When I was Jo's age, I had friends who did what Chloe and Stacey do to Jo and it made my life so awful to see people I thought were friends act so coldly, and meanly. It brought it all back and I felt so sad that Jo was being treated in that way. In fact, my only issue with the novel was that Chloe never told Jo why she'd started acting the way she did, and I didn't understand why Stacey just went along with it.
It was a lovely book all in all, the issues in the novel were all dealt with quite sensitively and the friendship thing definitely made me super sad. I loved getting to know Jo and her family, and especially Zim and Jen, Jo's brother and his girlfriend. They really were super cool, the kind of older brother you'd love to have in your life. It's definitely one a younger reader would lap up, and I would have loved a friend like Jo growing up.
Something Wiki was a younger novel that I expected - Jo and her friends are 12, and while they're not in my usual age-range, I really liked Jo. I found that her tale - where her rock star cool older brother ends up back in the family fold, with a pregnant girlfriend in two, and Jo's best friends suddenly don't feel like they're the best any more, and they're certainly not friendly.
Each chapter opens with an edited Wikipedia entry, and it took me a little while to realise what were the bits Jo edited, but I soon got in to it, and I found every Wikipedia entry was apt for the upcoming chapter, with Jo's chapters being very realistic. They were a super fun way to open up the chapter.
Jo was such a sweet narrator, too! I felt so sad for her to see that her "best" friends were deserting her, for reasons I still don't quite understand. When I was Jo's age, I had friends who did what Chloe and Stacey do to Jo and it made my life so awful to see people I thought were friends act so coldly, and meanly. It brought it all back and I felt so sad that Jo was being treated in that way. In fact, my only issue with the novel was that Chloe never told Jo why she'd started acting the way she did, and I didn't understand why Stacey just went along with it.
It was a lovely book all in all, the issues in the novel were all dealt with quite sensitively and the friendship thing definitely made me super sad. I loved getting to know Jo and her family, and especially Zim and Jen, Jo's brother and his girlfriend. They really were super cool, the kind of older brother you'd love to have in your life. It's definitely one a younger reader would lap up, and I would have loved a friend like Jo growing up.