Review: Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisibleby Suzanne Kamata + Giveaway

Welcome to my review of Gadget Girl! You can follow the tour HERE.

Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisible by Suzanne Kamata
Publication: May 17th 2013 
Genre: YA Contemporary

Rating: 5.0/50

Tour Hosted by: Xpresso Book Tours

 

Book Links: Goodreads | Amazon

Book Description:

ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS meets STONER AND SPAZ.

Aiko Cassidy is fourteen and lives with her sculptor mother in a small Midwestern town. For most of her young life Aiko, who has cerebral palsy, has been her mother’s muse. But now, she no longer wants to pose for the sculptures that have made her mother famous and have put food on the table. Aiko works hard on her own dream of becoming a great manga artist with a secret identity. When Aiko’s mother invites her to Paris for a major exhibition of her work, Aiko at first resists. She’d much rather go to Japan, Manga Capital of the World, where she might be able to finally meet her father, the indigo farmer.

When she gets to France, however, a hot waiter with a passion for manga and an interest in Aiko makes her wonder if being invisible is such a great thing after all. And a side trip to Lourdes, ridiculous as it seems to her, might just change her life. Gadget Girl began as a novella published in Cicada. The story won the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award in Fiction and was included in an anthology of the best stories published in Cicada over the past ten years.

My Review:

I can honestly say that I loved this book and that I would read it again. I signed up for the tour a while ago and since then have read many books, so when I opened this one up I had forgotten what is was about. (Love reading books like this!) Judging by the cover, I thought it would be an action/adventure kind of book.

Nope! Not to say that there is no adventure to this book, but that wasn’t the focus. Aiko has cerebral palsy but loves to draw and write her own comic books. I’m not really a manga fan, so this part kinda flew over my head, but I got the idea! Gadget Girl, the heroine of her comic books, is basically everything Aiko isn’t. She has super-human strength and extreme precision, and is perfect in every way.

 I loved how Aiko was cheerful all through the book, she didn’t mope around all the time. True enough, she had her moments, but it wasn’t a total mope-fest.

Oh and she doesn’t know who her father is, because her mother HELD BACK THE TRUTH. C’mon, Mums, don’t do that. Doesn’t protect your child in anyway. All that she knew was that her Father was from Japan and that her parents met in France.

Aiko’s mother was a little overbearing at times, (this was intentional) and it was like, she doesn’t want her baby to grow up, but overall her mother was really nice and the relationship they had was loving, despite the part where her mother didn’t tell her about her father.

Seeing as this book is kinda short (250) pages, it’s a really sweet read that will leave you wanting to read it again! Plus, why wouldn’t you want to read this book? It’s got manga, it’s got romance, it’s got French guys, it’s got art and self discovery.

Giveaway:

5 paperback copies of Gadget Girl (open internationally)

a Rafflecoptor Giveaway

About Author:

Website | Goodreads | Twitter

Five-time Pushcart Prize nominee Suzanne Kamata is the author of the novels Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisible (GemmaMedia, 2013) and Losing Kei (Leapfrog Press, 2008), and editor of three anthologies – The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan, Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs, and Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2009). Her short fiction and essays have appeared widely. She is the Fiction Co-editor of literarymama.com