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No one is more sad than me.

I love nothing more than sad girl fic and weird books. Unfortunately BLOB is underdeveloped and lacking real exploration of its subject matter


Sad Girl Fic
I feel like there's such a fine line with sad girl fic. I need to find the character and their story compelling, and the conclusion satisfying. By nature the stories are a bit slow and mundane, because it's a character study of our sad girl - why she's depressed, why her life is frankly trash, and generally how that arch progresses.

Blob had an opportunity to take out some of that mundane-ness with you know... the blob. And it did at first. We get visuals of the blob existing half formed that I think were so fun. But boy was it wasted.

The most tragic part of Blob for me was if you removed the blob, I fully believe you could have had the same story. You could get Vi's same story arch with very few plot beat changes. All her interactions with Blob just made me like her less.

The blurb says "BLOB tells a witty, heartfelt story of what it means to be human." and it tackles that for literally 2 pages at the end.

The Characters
No one in this book is perfect. Everyone is kind of a flailing mess - which is the point, but as above, it's underdeveloped.
Vi: Just terrible. She honestly reminded me of Ji-won in The Eyes Are the Best Part but like, without any of the fun eyeball obsession and murderous tendencies that made her fun to follow. She's introverted, and socially awkward but we spend the whole book seeing flashback moments of her ruining friendships by being straight mean.

Bob: Underutilized, underdeveloped. He and the main character don't even really talk. And I think BLOB would have benefited from it spanning more time

Rachel: Vi's super pretty, super nice coworker. We do see her life isn't perfect and put together, in casual drops that I would have loved to explore deeper buuuut we don't. I wish her the best and I hope she finds happiness, she deserves better than the ending she got


The Rant
ALL THAT SAID
I could have given this book 3 stars. It was fine. Underdeveloped when it could have been excellent. It has good bones.

But I'm removing a star for 2 things
1. Can we stop having alcoholic characters where alcohol is never address as an issue? This happens in Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler too. Alcohol is being used as a crutch/numbing agent, all the time, and they're actively making terrible, life effecting decisions while drinking. But we never discuss it. It's something I've been noticing a lot with FMCs and the only person who has addressed it in a book so for is Talia Hibbert

2. I do want to preface this one by saying I am probably more sensitive to this than other people as I've struggled with ED in the past and actively curate my feeds to avoid diet talk and have surrounded myself in a very body positive sphere so I don't have much exposure. So when it sneaks its why so casually into a book this much I find it pretty noticeable.

Trust me, I know it's unfortunately normal to be preoccupied with body size. But the number of casual mentions of Vi's fat rolls (in a negative way) that were never challenged. The inclusion of Rachel's disordered eating - again not really challenged. Was reminiscent of fiction before the body positivity movement and I do not want to go back there. So CW/TW for disordered eating, fat shaming, fatphobia etc

There was one particular line that actually made me angry
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"My mom was worried enough about me to get rid of the knives and the full-fat ice cream before I arrived."

I... What. My mom was worried that I'd kill myself and eat too much ice cream post breakup I'd get fat?????????? What the fuck?????
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