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Bombshell
In real life, Joss Wyatt is an ordinary teenage girl, with a tight-knit group of friends and a potential boyfriend. But online, she’s an art restorer in Washington, DC, a model jet-setting around Europe, a southern beauty queen trapped in a loveless marriage. Online, she’s anyone she wants to be.
For years, Joss has maintained a varied set of alternative lives, using them to escape the boredom that is her existence in a generic Arizona suburb. But when she starts receiving anonymous messages threatening to reveal her identity to everyone she knows—both in real life and online—Joss’s carefully constructed worlds begin to unravel. Can Joss catch her stalker before all of her worlds collapse?
For years, Joss has maintained a varied set of alternative lives, using them to escape the boredom that is her existence in a generic Arizona suburb. But when she starts receiving anonymous messages threatening to reveal her identity to everyone she knows—both in real life and online—Joss’s carefully constructed worlds begin to unravel. Can Joss catch her stalker before all of her worlds collapse?
320 pages, Hardcover
First published July 4, 2017
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427 people want to read
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July 26, 2022Oftentimes adult authors have trouble depicting the complex relationship between teens and technology in today’s world, but Rowan Maness does this beautifully in the YA novel Bombshell.
Set in Arizona, Joss Wyatt, a high school Sophomore at Xavier Prep, has anything but a simple online presence. Tangled in her multitude of digital personalities and lovers, Joss gets lost in this new world and begins to lose sight of life beyond the screen. Her journey serves as a reminder of the dangers of seemingly harmless actions and the very real toll that those consequences can take on one’s life and mental health.
One unique aspect of the book that I particularly enjoyed is how the author made continual references to real places and vividly described natural scenes unique to Arizona. The ability to envision the places Joss was going, because I had been there myself, helped me to relate to her on a deeper level.
A wonderful read! -Adelina, SPL Teen Volunteer
Set in Arizona, Joss Wyatt, a high school Sophomore at Xavier Prep, has anything but a simple online presence. Tangled in her multitude of digital personalities and lovers, Joss gets lost in this new world and begins to lose sight of life beyond the screen. Her journey serves as a reminder of the dangers of seemingly harmless actions and the very real toll that those consequences can take on one’s life and mental health.
One unique aspect of the book that I particularly enjoyed is how the author made continual references to real places and vividly described natural scenes unique to Arizona. The ability to envision the places Joss was going, because I had been there myself, helped me to relate to her on a deeper level.
A wonderful read! -Adelina, SPL Teen Volunteer
December 12, 2020
See more of my reviews on The YA Kitten! My copy was an ARC I got from the publisher via Edelweiss.
Warning: ableism, anti-asexual sentiment
MAJOR SPOILER WARNING. As in, I detail the mystery's resolution so I can tell you how fucking awful this book is.
tl;dr this book is an ableist horror show about a girl with delusional disorder. Her love interest calls her autistic and inhuman but she ends up with him even though he never apologizes for it. Also, the characters explicitly link being on the spectrum to being inhuman and sociopathic (the book's word, not mine). Bonus talk of "correcting" asexuality too!
Fuck Bombshell, fuck its author Rowan Maness, and fuck spoilers because I'm too furious to care. I'm making this one personal because she made it personal by using a developmental disorder I and millions of other people have as an insult in her garbage-ass book.
Joss Louisa Wyatt is the queen of catfishing. An Arizona school girl who's also a jet-setting model, an abused Southern society housewife, and an art school student. She's catfished plenty of people and seems like she'll catfish many more--except she's so astonishingly bad at it that I'm surprised it's only blown up in her face once (she was thirteen and it was her first catfishing ever). She doesn't use a burner phone to talk to her victims, nor does she use any of the many smartphone apps that generate a fake number for you. By all indications, she uses her own cell number to text these guys.
To be fair for a second, maybe she uses some kind of chat/messenger app to do her "work." Bombshell, as poorly written and consistently unclear as it is, never specifies what she uses to text and call them on her phone. She also chats with them on her computer, but nothing indicates she uses a VPN service or any other method to hide her IP address. Joss keeps meticulous logs of all her catfishes in a fake school folder on her computer with no password protection or anything.
Seriously, how has this not gone to shit again sooner?
Except TWIST! Things haven't gone to shit after all because she's doing it all to herself and has developed pinpoint amnesia about when she arranged it so readers don't find that out until she remembers it herself at the end of the book! Had she not had a combination crisis and mental breakdown, she could have kept going!
Look, I meant it when I said I was going to spoil things. If you're here and mad about it, it's your own fault for ignoring my first two warnings.
And speaking of twists, the revelation of what mental illness Joss has is treated as one in typical ableist fashion, so let me spoil that too. She has delusional disorder, she hallucinates a coyote, she completely disassociates at times, and she blacks out multiple times. Since nothing else seems to explain why she catfishes people, I guess it's because she's bored and mentally ill. No one's mental illness makes them catfish people, so I call ableist bullshit on that too. She does it more after her dad's death, sure, but she started it while he was still alive.
I could give you an enumerated list of all the ableist things in this book, but it would add many more words to what's already a very long review. Here's something else offensive instead: a joke about correcting asexuality when the character in question isn't even ace! He just isn't pushy about sex!
Me: ...maybe
Rhiannon: omg you need to stream updates constantly
Me: He's weirdly asexual
Rhiannon: Not for long
Now I can tell Maness to go fuck herself as an autistic person and an asexual person! Shane the love interest is also introduced as such: "[My cat] hates women. And men too, actually, but she really likes Shane--maybe because he is neither." Don't get excited thinking Shame is nonbinary, though. He's cis. It's meant to get across that Joss has never thought of her longtime best friend as a guy she could be attracted to, but like
maybe use better, clearer phrasing? But maybe that's asking too much from a novel so poorly written.
Now let's get back to the autism thing. As it turns out, Shane is catfishing Joss because he loves her and felt that was the best way to make the girl who's oblivious to his feelings fall for him. (You best your ass I laughed at the catfish queen failing to recognize the obvious signs she herself was being catfished. It's all ludicrous.) Once the jig is up, they argue and he handles his spurned affections by calling her autistic and inhuman. I CHECKED THAT SHIT AGAINST THE FINAL COPY. IT'S THERE.
Let me count all the things about this that make me say FUCK YOU:
* using autism as an insult
* him correlating it with being inhuman
* Joss's brother later saying she's more sociopathic
* Shane never apologizes for it
* THEY END UP TOGETHER
There is not a single excuse for that bullshit. Teens talk like that? No they don't, I was in high school ten years ago and students ran their own campaign to get everyone to quit using the r-word, so today's teenagers are surely even better than that. It is a writer's responsibility not to write dehumanizing, anti-autistic horseshit--or any of this ableist horseshit in general. When it comes to writing, follow the same rule as doctors: do no harm.
God, I'm SO MAD I misspelled "responsibility" three times because fury made me forget how spelling works. I am literally unable to parse all the ableist bullshit in this book.
That's it. Don't read the garbage fire that is Bombshell. And don't say a goddamn word to me, Rowan. I don't want to hear it.
Warning: ableism, anti-asexual sentiment
MAJOR SPOILER WARNING. As in, I detail the mystery's resolution so I can tell you how fucking awful this book is.
tl;dr this book is an ableist horror show about a girl with delusional disorder. Her love interest calls her autistic and inhuman but she ends up with him even though he never apologizes for it. Also, the characters explicitly link being on the spectrum to being inhuman and sociopathic (the book's word, not mine). Bonus talk of "correcting" asexuality too!
Fuck Bombshell, fuck its author Rowan Maness, and fuck spoilers because I'm too furious to care. I'm making this one personal because she made it personal by using a developmental disorder I and millions of other people have as an insult in her garbage-ass book.
Joss Louisa Wyatt is the queen of catfishing. An Arizona school girl who's also a jet-setting model, an abused Southern society housewife, and an art school student. She's catfished plenty of people and seems like she'll catfish many more--except she's so astonishingly bad at it that I'm surprised it's only blown up in her face once (she was thirteen and it was her first catfishing ever). She doesn't use a burner phone to talk to her victims, nor does she use any of the many smartphone apps that generate a fake number for you. By all indications, she uses her own cell number to text these guys.
To be fair for a second, maybe she uses some kind of chat/messenger app to do her "work." Bombshell, as poorly written and consistently unclear as it is, never specifies what she uses to text and call them on her phone. She also chats with them on her computer, but nothing indicates she uses a VPN service or any other method to hide her IP address. Joss keeps meticulous logs of all her catfishes in a fake school folder on her computer with no password protection or anything.
Seriously, how has this not gone to shit again sooner?
Except TWIST! Things haven't gone to shit after all because she's doing it all to herself and has developed pinpoint amnesia about when she arranged it so readers don't find that out until she remembers it herself at the end of the book! Had she not had a combination crisis and mental breakdown, she could have kept going!
Look, I meant it when I said I was going to spoil things. If you're here and mad about it, it's your own fault for ignoring my first two warnings.
And speaking of twists, the revelation of what mental illness Joss has is treated as one in typical ableist fashion, so let me spoil that too. She has delusional disorder, she hallucinates a coyote, she completely disassociates at times, and she blacks out multiple times. Since nothing else seems to explain why she catfishes people, I guess it's because she's bored and mentally ill. No one's mental illness makes them catfish people, so I call ableist bullshit on that too. She does it more after her dad's death, sure, but she started it while he was still alive.
I could give you an enumerated list of all the ableist things in this book, but it would add many more words to what's already a very long review. Here's something else offensive instead: a joke about correcting asexuality when the character in question isn't even ace! He just isn't pushy about sex!
Me: ...maybe
Rhiannon: omg you need to stream updates constantly
Me: He's weirdly asexual
Rhiannon: Not for long
Now I can tell Maness to go fuck herself as an autistic person and an asexual person! Shane the love interest is also introduced as such: "[My cat] hates women. And men too, actually, but she really likes Shane--maybe because he is neither." Don't get excited thinking Shame is nonbinary, though. He's cis. It's meant to get across that Joss has never thought of her longtime best friend as a guy she could be attracted to, but like
maybe use better, clearer phrasing? But maybe that's asking too much from a novel so poorly written.
Now let's get back to the autism thing. As it turns out, Shane is catfishing Joss because he loves her and felt that was the best way to make the girl who's oblivious to his feelings fall for him. (You best your ass I laughed at the catfish queen failing to recognize the obvious signs she herself was being catfished. It's all ludicrous.) Once the jig is up, they argue and he handles his spurned affections by calling her autistic and inhuman. I CHECKED THAT SHIT AGAINST THE FINAL COPY. IT'S THERE.
Let me count all the things about this that make me say FUCK YOU:
* using autism as an insult
* him correlating it with being inhuman
* Joss's brother later saying she's more sociopathic
* Shane never apologizes for it
* THEY END UP TOGETHER
There is not a single excuse for that bullshit. Teens talk like that? No they don't, I was in high school ten years ago and students ran their own campaign to get everyone to quit using the r-word, so today's teenagers are surely even better than that. It is a writer's responsibility not to write dehumanizing, anti-autistic horseshit--or any of this ableist horseshit in general. When it comes to writing, follow the same rule as doctors: do no harm.
God, I'm SO MAD I misspelled "responsibility" three times because fury made me forget how spelling works. I am literally unable to parse all the ableist bullshit in this book.
That's it. Don't read the garbage fire that is Bombshell. And don't say a goddamn word to me, Rowan. I don't want to hear it.
June 18, 2017
WHAT A RIDE! You have to read this book!
16 year-old Joss makes up worlds. She is a story teller, creating characters and stories to go with them. The problem is, she doesn't leave them in the realm of fiction. She goes on dating sites and posts these fake people as real women. She gets unsuspecting men to fall for them, one for each persona, men who are willing to be involved with someone in cyberspace rather than a person in front of them, and sometimes things get hairy. But one of them is so sweet and so close to what she needs that Joss starts to have legitimate feelings for him. In the meantime, Joss' real friends are getting disgusted with her because she seems more interested in texting these random guys than spending face time with them. Plus there is a cyber stalker / hacker on Joss' tail, and maybe Joss herself is cracking up, not quite able to perceive anymore what is real and what is not.
There are so many things I like about this book but I'll limit myself to one here: BOMBSHELL shows how you need people to help you get out of messes. They may be friends or family or both. Yes, mostly it's you and only you who has to do the work. BUT! You can't do it alone and you do need help. Most likely it's not going to be only one person doing the helping. Different people, sometimes unwittingly, will help you find your way to sanity and clarity. And sometimes, as BOMBSHELL shows, this help comes from where you might not expect.
BOMBSHELL is a novel for the current times. It deftly portrays the pressures of a high school girl today who is not satisfied with the world around her, an exceptionally intelligent girl with an imagination that unfortunately may become her undoing. It's a wild ride, a real page-turner, with an ending that is both unexpected and eminently satisfying. Like I say, you have to read this book!
16 year-old Joss makes up worlds. She is a story teller, creating characters and stories to go with them. The problem is, she doesn't leave them in the realm of fiction. She goes on dating sites and posts these fake people as real women. She gets unsuspecting men to fall for them, one for each persona, men who are willing to be involved with someone in cyberspace rather than a person in front of them, and sometimes things get hairy. But one of them is so sweet and so close to what she needs that Joss starts to have legitimate feelings for him. In the meantime, Joss' real friends are getting disgusted with her because she seems more interested in texting these random guys than spending face time with them. Plus there is a cyber stalker / hacker on Joss' tail, and maybe Joss herself is cracking up, not quite able to perceive anymore what is real and what is not.
There are so many things I like about this book but I'll limit myself to one here: BOMBSHELL shows how you need people to help you get out of messes. They may be friends or family or both. Yes, mostly it's you and only you who has to do the work. BUT! You can't do it alone and you do need help. Most likely it's not going to be only one person doing the helping. Different people, sometimes unwittingly, will help you find your way to sanity and clarity. And sometimes, as BOMBSHELL shows, this help comes from where you might not expect.
BOMBSHELL is a novel for the current times. It deftly portrays the pressures of a high school girl today who is not satisfied with the world around her, an exceptionally intelligent girl with an imagination that unfortunately may become her undoing. It's a wild ride, a real page-turner, with an ending that is both unexpected and eminently satisfying. Like I say, you have to read this book!
July 15, 2017
Bombshell is a trippy thriller that unravels along the edges of the Arizona desert and expertly captures the bizarre boredom of suburbia and subsequent itching to escape childhood. It's a book that plunges headfirst into a spiraling, chaotic descent into the world of adolescent Internet personalities and avatars. Joss, our young daydreaming protagonist, is constantly on the edge of losing herself to the many different online personas she has created to attract men across the country. She spins these online narrative threads as a vital and oftentimes dangerous way of escaping her humdrum teenage existence in suburban Arizona.
This book is an utter delight. Rowan Maness effortlessly weaves sentences together that frequently leave you in a dizzy spell, awed. Her writing style is sharp, clear, and piercing. The book borders perfection in its ability to express the painful ennui of adolescent longing set against the deep expanse of the desert. Joss may have some close friends in real life - although her relationships are always complicated and complicating - yet her yearning for adulthood and to escape the pains of her past add a vivid lens to the whole adventure. Bombshell balances carefully between Joss's anxieties about responsibility, friendship, and sisterhood with her eerie experimentation of her online desires.
For being a "teenage"/YA book, Maness does an impeccable job at exploring dark and intriguing themes of mental illness, especially the thin veil separating fantasy from reality. Joss stands at a particular apex in her life - wanting to lose herself in increasingly complex fantasy lives of the women she's created online, while feeling burdened by the harsh & persistent realities of her family, friends, and school. As the main plot hurdles toward its page-turning climax, the thin lines between her concocted lives and reality snap apart, allowing the novel to really soar. By the end, as Joss's online personas collide dramatically with her real life, Bombshell deftly reminds us this book is all about one lonely girl just trying to survive the loneliness of being a teenager. It's a masterful novel, one that you will want to re-read and parse more deeply as soon as you've set it down. I can't wait to read what's next from Rowan Maness.
This book is an utter delight. Rowan Maness effortlessly weaves sentences together that frequently leave you in a dizzy spell, awed. Her writing style is sharp, clear, and piercing. The book borders perfection in its ability to express the painful ennui of adolescent longing set against the deep expanse of the desert. Joss may have some close friends in real life - although her relationships are always complicated and complicating - yet her yearning for adulthood and to escape the pains of her past add a vivid lens to the whole adventure. Bombshell balances carefully between Joss's anxieties about responsibility, friendship, and sisterhood with her eerie experimentation of her online desires.
For being a "teenage"/YA book, Maness does an impeccable job at exploring dark and intriguing themes of mental illness, especially the thin veil separating fantasy from reality. Joss stands at a particular apex in her life - wanting to lose herself in increasingly complex fantasy lives of the women she's created online, while feeling burdened by the harsh & persistent realities of her family, friends, and school. As the main plot hurdles toward its page-turning climax, the thin lines between her concocted lives and reality snap apart, allowing the novel to really soar. By the end, as Joss's online personas collide dramatically with her real life, Bombshell deftly reminds us this book is all about one lonely girl just trying to survive the loneliness of being a teenager. It's a masterful novel, one that you will want to re-read and parse more deeply as soon as you've set it down. I can't wait to read what's next from Rowan Maness.
July 13, 2017
Joss - our teenaged anti-hero - is bored. She’s lived her whole life in the same banal suburb and has gone to school with the same group of kids who have long ago made their minds up about her. Her only escape is through the characters she invents and animates within the comfortable anonymity of the internet. The only problem is that her escape digs her into deep web of lies with some very real, and very dangerous consequences.
At first it can be difficult to understand why Joss does what she does, but as the story unfolds we see just how deeply connected she is with the avatars she creates. She uses them to sift through all the possibilities for what her own life could be. Avatar Rosie is the projection of the person she hopes to become - confident, sexy, intelligent, artistic…and deeply in love with someone equally as interesting. Rosie can do the things Joss is afraid to do, and Joss crafts these lies in order to cope with the messiness of the world around her.
Bombshell explores all the uncomfortable realities of adolescence, of slowly understanding the world outside yourself and the (positive and negative) effect you have on it. And, perhaps best of all, it actually takes teenagers seriously.
At first it can be difficult to understand why Joss does what she does, but as the story unfolds we see just how deeply connected she is with the avatars she creates. She uses them to sift through all the possibilities for what her own life could be. Avatar Rosie is the projection of the person she hopes to become - confident, sexy, intelligent, artistic…and deeply in love with someone equally as interesting. Rosie can do the things Joss is afraid to do, and Joss crafts these lies in order to cope with the messiness of the world around her.
Bombshell explores all the uncomfortable realities of adolescence, of slowly understanding the world outside yourself and the (positive and negative) effect you have on it. And, perhaps best of all, it actually takes teenagers seriously.
January 24, 2018
Somehow this not teenage author perfectly captured how the inside of a teenage mind operates, then gave it a modern twist with social media. Not only does the author capture all the thoughts the main character has, but she capturers how the main character manages the things she CANT control, like an infesting mental illness. This book is so real and with every sentence I was awing at how accurate of a representation this book was of what a teenager was all about. Relationships are deeper, school is the least favorite thing, social media is addictive, teachers are humans too, parents are crazy, and friends are complicated. At times the only thing keeping this main character from her real self is her online self. Read this to be amazed.
June 26, 2017
I pushed through but was just a little weird to me. The writing seemed a bit juvenile, but I liked the concept.
January 24, 2018
This book is a must read! At first I was a little skeptical of this book being very cheesy, however when a read the first few pages I was hooked. As a high schooler, I really connected to Joss Wyatt and this book took me on a rollercoaster ride. There were many twists in the book and it always kept me on my toes and wanting to read more. The way the author ties everything that happens in Joss's life together is truly wonderful.
September 28, 2017
Amazing. Characters so real & true to life, incredibly rich internal conflicts, vivid & honest dialogue, a plot that will keep you turning pages until dawn. This author has done something truly unique & has incredible promise. I want to live in Joss' world forever.
April 21, 2020
actually a 3.5 🤷🏻♀️ full review is on my (amateur) blog! if u wanna check it out (which i would love if u will), here's the link! https://justinnehorteza.wixsite.com/m...
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September 12, 2017My review is posted on the Hub:
http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2017/...
http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2017/...
August 25, 2019
MC clearly needs help
sorta unreliable narrator which isn't really my type
sorta unreliable narrator which isn't really my type
July 13, 2017
Well, that was an adventure.
Glad to see that the situation was actually handled competently at the end- namely, that
Glad to see that the situation was actually handled competently at the end- namely, that
September 20, 2017
I love this book so much, it was my second reading and it meant even more to me than the first. Joss' experience reminds me of the feelings all of us have in our adolescence. We all crave a dream palace.
The writing is haunting and relatable, and I know I will come back to this book again and again.
The writing is haunting and relatable, and I know I will come back to this book again and again.
March 22, 2019
If you like books that have a meaning, please do not read this book. The main character shows no development and reminded me of all the selfish people in the world. Overall I wish I hadn’t bought it but at least I only bought it for $2 at indigo.
August 8, 2020
This book was fantastic, I just really enjoyed the whole idea of it, of pretending to be someone you're not on the internet!
January 24, 2018
Catfish-ing, drugs, so much infidelity, lying, hypocrisy, breakdowns, stalking, hacking, secrets, inappropriate relationships between students and teachers, and drama. Lord, this was some white girl nonsense! The story was Pretty Little Liars + Girl, Interrupted + The Lying Game levels of crazy. And so I think that's a good thing for people who like young adult thrillers and I think the pacing moved pretty fast. I think readers who are into thriller and mysteries like the tv shows/ movie listed will dig this. And I like a good mystery but not when the main character is an unreliable narrator. She also didn't redeem herself as a character in my opinion and honestly, I didn't find the crew here to be likeable from all the infidelity and drama. I wasn't here for Joss and her 50 shades of cray cray or anybody else, except maybe Kit. I vote for him to be an actual person so I can meet him IRL and the only changes I'd make is 1. No Blue dream/drugs and 2. Older than me, but not by a significant amount. And his guitar is always welcome for jam sessions. It was hard to sympathize with her and most importantly understand why she did EVERYTHING that she did. Thumbs up to this book for introducing me to "Modern Lovers." Four thumbs down for the approval of "Green Day."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 25, 2018
I personally did not like this text. The literary style and the vocabulary used seemed rather juvenile. The techniques that the author used to compose the story were not executed effectively from the perspective of the reader. On top of that, the storyline itself was extremely over-complicated in an effort to seem 'edgy' and 'unpredictable', when all that was really achieved was a mess. It took significantly more energy as a reader to follow what was happening than the actual storyline, in my opinion, is worth. And while some of the 'surprises' at the end of the story were rather unexpected, it was not because of a clever logical jump, but rather a completely disconnected conclusion that had not been at all properly tied in throughout the rest of the novel. The one redeeming characteristic of this novel is the originality of the origin of the conflict (the fact that Joss catfishes people), which I have yet to see in another novel.
April 11, 2021
This book wasn’t it for me. The story wasn’t great the character was a manipulative liar that used her lies as a power tool over people around her and she had no growth whatsoever. As if the book couldn’t get any worse, the characters sociopathic lifestyle was associated with being ‘autistic’. I didn’t relate with any of the characters in the book and they all seemed so out of touch with reality. Would not recommend this book at all
May 5, 2021
It was an interesting book but i didnt like the writing very much
March 11, 2023
WHY ISNT IT POSSIBLE TO RATE WITH O STARS?
January 16, 2024
i bought this book for nothing. the plot is so confusing and weird. I also hate the main characters. I wish to tear this book apart and burn it.
January 8, 2025
I'm a psychology practitioner and this book is awful and ableist. How is this even approved and published?
Want to read
September 30, 2017I received a copy of this book from Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 15, 2018
Started out promising but goes off the rails near the end with a few plot holes that make this hard to recommend.
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March 14, 2018The cover is very nice, however, the story was boring. For some reason, I was compelled to finish it, but overall, I felt very distant from everything and didn’t very well understood the characters or the symbolism of the coyote.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews