Just for Clicks by Kara McDowell was a pretty highly anticipated release for me, the synopsis sounded really interesting. And while I don’t read a lot of contemporary, this sounded like the kind of contemporary story I would enjoy. So when I got the chance to read this through Netgalley I was super excited! If you’re interested in finding out my thoughts on the book, keep on reading!

Just for Clicks

Mommy blogs are great . . . unless the blog happens to belong to your mom.

Twin sisters Claire & Poppy are accidental social media stars thanks to Mom going viral when they were babies. Now, as teens, they’re expected to contribute by building their own brand. Attending a NY fashion week and receiving fan mail is a blast. Fending off internet trolls and would-be kidnappers? Not so much. Poppy embraces it. Claire hates it. Will anybody accept her as “just Claire”? And what should Claire do about Mom’s old journals? The handwritten entries definitely don’t sound like Mom’s perfect blog persona. Worse, one of them divulges a secret that leaves Claire wondering what else in her life might be nothing but a sham . . .

Cover

This is a pretty generic contemporary cover, and while I normally hate people on covers I actually really like this one! I love the color scheme, the white doodles and I also like the models they used for Claire and Poppy. The cover brings the feel of the book across quite well I think.

Plot

I didn’t realize this book was only 250 pages when I started reading it, but I flew through it and before I knew it I hit the end. When I dived into this story I was expecting a cute and fluffy contemporary novel featuring sisters and bloggers. And while I got that, I also got more!

Claire and Poppy are the daughters of a famous mommy blogger and they have their own instagram account and youtube channel with quite the following. I loved reading about their experience as famous influencers. It was also super interesting to read how much time is spend on creating content for a blog or insta account or youtube channel. Since Candyce and I started this blog, we have spent so much time on it and I never would’ve guessed that upfront.

Apart from the blogger storyline we also got a little mystery going on. As a mystery fan I really enjoyed that part, even though I did figure out the twist pretty early on. It’s always nice to be right haha. And we obviously also got a little romance. It was a really cute slow burn romance and those are my favorite kinds of romance.

In between the chapters we got little text messages, forum posts, voicemails and stuff like that. I wish all books did that, especially contemporary one, it’s just so enjoyable! As I said, this is a pretty short book, and that is one of my only complaints. I wished the ending was a little bit more stretched out and could’ve used some more expanding. We got a pretty quick solution and that didn’t feel completely right unfortunately. Otherwise this was a fast and cute story.

Characters

Our main character is Claire, she’s really sweet, a little bit insecure and she loves coding. I really liked that she was into coding, that’s not a hobby you come across often. Especially not with these types of characters. I also liked that Claire slowly learned to stick up for herself and started to make choices based on what she wanted and not on what she thought others would want.

Poppy is Claire’s twin sister and I just have to say I love her name haha. Other than that she fell a little bit flat for me. She wasn’t as well developed as Claire and seemed pretty selfish. I think that was part of why the ending felt a little bit rushed. It did show their lack of communication and the positive outcome of proper communication put I didn’t feel like it totally fit Poppy. Or at least not the side we got to see of her.

Rafael is the new kid at school and he isn’t really into technology and cellphones and stuff. This was a pretty fun route to take with this character and it raised some really good points. I liked his character in general and think his interactions with Claire were really fun.

I highly enjoyed this contemporary novel filled with blogging, Youtube, fashion and secrets. If you like these things, and are involved with social media yourself, please pick it up! Have you read any book featuring bloggers that you enjoyed? Let me know in the comments!