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Bubble World Book Review

Title: Bubble World
Author: Carol Snow
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN-13: 978-0805095715

352 pp.

ARC provided by publisher

You may be bundled up the layers as you sit by the fireside and sip on hot cocoa, but if you want to escape to somewhere sunny, Bubble World by Carol Snow is a perfect beach read.

Escape is a key word here, as Bubble World isn't an actual place, but a virtual world where Freesia lives as she goes to parties and shops with her best friend. Except that Freesia doesn't realize that Bubble World is a virtual world. Not at first, anyway.

As the Bubble World is burst, Freesia is brought back to a reality that is considerably less "de-vicious" that the one she left. (Warning: A lot of Bubble World slang is introduced in the opening chapters. I thought it helped with the world-building, but your mileage may vary.)

Bubble World is a funny book with big ideas about identity, how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. It's thought-provoking without being preachy and with plenty of laughs along the way.

My biggest quibble was that while Freesia is a well-developed character, her real parents are about as one-dimensional as her computer generated ones.

But overall, Bubble World was a frothy, fun read and I would recommend it to readers who enjoyed Beauty Queens by Libba Bray or Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin.

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