Fly On The Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything by E. Lockhart Review

Fiction

182 pages

At the Manhattan School for Art and Music, where everyone is “different” and everyone is “special,” Gretchen Yee feels ordinary. She’s the kind of girl who sits alone at lunch, drawing pictures of Spider-Man, so she won’t have to talk to anyone; who has a crush on Titus but won’t do anything about it; who has no one to hang out with when her best (and only real) friend Katya is busy.
One day, Gretchen wishes that she could be a fly on the wall in the boys’ locker room–just to learn more about guys. What are they really like? What do they really talk about? Are they really cretins most of the time?Fly on the Wall is the story of how that wish comes true.

Completion: A+

Writing/Style: B+

Characters: A+

Plot/Pacing: B+

World-Building/Atmosphere: A-

Sub-genres (Romance, Humor, Mystery, etc.): A+

Grade: A Get Thee to the Bookstore!

Who knew a guys’ locker room could make such a great setting? Normally I would prefer a more sophisticated writing style, but Lockhart nailed the funny read. Due to the premise, the majority of the book consists of only the thoughts of Gretchen Yee. By herself. As a fly. That’s a great character there. I could live inside her head forever. Her humor made this novel. I love Gretchen and the thoughts that run through her head, and, as a side note, I love that Gretchen is not white, not super worried about popularity, and actually has a personality. I’m always glad to see some diversity in my main characters. The plot is so simple, so straightforward, and yet it is better because of it. Something that could have been so dull, a main character as a fly, was pulled off with such ease and humor. The novel never felt slow, and there was not a single moment that I wasn’t engrossed in the story even though the actual plot points are minimal. The romance isn’t super developed, but who cares? Since the main character was a fly for the majority of the novel, it gets off the hook. Plus, I love both of the characters so why wouldn’t I want them to be happy together?

I promise I won’t blather on about this too much, but the short version of this is: read it. This book was another great recommendation from John Green, vlogger and author. My face hurt from laughing so much. At any one given moment, I was blushing with embarrassment and laughing out loud. This book makes for a great summer read or pick-me-up.