Girl from Mars by Julie Cohen

Girl from Mars is what I would call a pick-me-up book from the Little Black Dress group. It follows a young woman called Philomena Desdemona Brown, who is the animation artist for the popular comic, Girl from Mars. Her 3 best friends are all male and romance has never been kind to her- in fact, her only priorities are her job and the weekly pub quiz with the guys. That is, until one of them decides to fall in love, leaving the others to think about their own choices. Philomena then meets a charming American called Dan, and then her world gets turned upside-down for good- particularly as her beloved comic is subjected to a massive redesign.
I felt the book was disappointingly predictable from the first page, and there lacked a sense of authenticity to it. There were admittedly some comical and thoughtful scenes within, but these were to the minimum and barely enough to give it a respectable reputation in my bookcase. Nevertheless, the quirky nature of Cohen’s writing kept me from giving up hope for the story, and I did grow to empathise with Philomena through her turbulence of a life. The book seems to act more as a mild blunder into the imaginative world rather than a hard-hitting novel, but I think that may have been so because of being part of the Little Black Dress group. The LBD publishes a new book each month, encouraging its productions to be relatively short, and I feel that the decrease in pages caused Girl From Mars to be quite rushed, and so lost a lot of impact for me. Overall, it may be worthwhile as a quick read during the holidays, but nothing really to get excited over.

By Lian Wilkinson