Book Review- Emily the Strange- The Lost Days by Rob Reger& Jessica Gruner

Title: Emily the Strange-The Lost Days

Author: Rob Reger and Jessica Gruner

Series: Emily the Strange #1

Published: 226 pages

Length: June 1 2009

Warnings: gambling, extremely faint one sided romance

Other info: Emily the Strange is also a popular franchise.There are other books in the series.

Summary : Emily may be odd, but she always gets even!

Meet Emily, the peculiar soul with long black hair, a wit of fire, and a posse of slightly sinister black cats. Famous for her barbed commentary and independent spirit, this rebel-child in black has spawned an Internet and merchandising phenomenon (Emily's web site gets 35,000 hits per month!). Emily the Strange,her first book, captures the quintessential Emily, featuring her most beloved quips and a host of new ones. Anarchist, heroine, survivor, this little girl with a big personality appeals to the odd child in us all.

Review: the first thing I want to talk about is the originality of this book. Not many start with a list of things the main character does and does not know. This one does. We then go with our heroine around the  small town of Blackrock. Earwig, as she decides to call herself, meets Raven, the girl at the coffee shop, Jakey, the nine year old psychic boy, the owners of a travelling medicine show, someone who is extremely alike to her, and four cats. she does all this not knowing who on earth she is.

So the whole book is about this girl, who you may have worked out is Emily, trying to find out who she is and why she doesn’t remember anything and answering all those little questions you’d probably want answered if you woke up in a random town with full amnesia.

I liked the slightly sarcastic voice which was very fun to read. I liked the form of pretty much all the dialogue- it’s all presented as a script form, as Emily obviously couldn’t be bothered to write it all out fully.

Emily herself is a great character with a very strong personality. The supporting characters were also interesting to read aobnut and hard individual personalities and it was easy to distinguish them.

Some of the things that actually happen, at first, very possibly might make you think “what on earth is going on here?”. Such as one character deciding that he was going to move all the buildings in the town one inch to the east. And the truth about Raven, which I won’t reveal. Spoilers.

I love the layout of this, and the design work that went into this. Unlike most books, which are *page colour* and black, this is pure white (page), black, and various shades of grey and red. It breaks up the monotony and adds interest to it. I like the original drawing style (even though its hard to draw) and its obvious that if the pictures were’nt there, the book wouldn’t nearly be as good as it is.

Overall:  Strength 5 tea to an amazing, original and funny book that makes me want to see more of Emily. And her cats.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Emily the Strange