Girl Online, the debut book by beauty vlogger Zoella is now the most popular among teenage girls

 

Teenage girls are shunning classic books for a romance novel by a 25-year-old beauty blogger, research shows.

Girl Online, the debut book by ‘Zoella’, is the most popular title among UK adolescents, despite being written with a ghost-writer and receiving mixed reviews.

Girl Online, penned with the help of a ghost-writer, tells the story of 15-year-old blogger Penny Porter.

Loosely based on Zoella’s own experiences, the novel explores what it is like to fall in love while growing up in a digital world, and follows the character’s struggles as her life is broadcast online.

Penny begins writing under an alias about friendship, boys and her ‘crazy’ family, as well as panic attacks that have plagued her since she was in a car crash.

She and her family travel to New York, where Penny meets an American guitarist, Noah. 

After falling in love, she returns home to find Noah has a huge YouTube following of his own – and a girlfriend.

After a friend leaks news of the relationship to a celebrity website, Penny vows never to write her blog again.

Zoella, whose real name is Zoe Sugg, is known for posting online videos of herself sampling make-up and other lifestyle products.

Young girls have flocked to the Brighton-based blogger’s YouTube channel, which has attracted more than ten million subscribers.

Her novel tells the story of a 15-year-old girl whose blog about friendship, boys, family and anxiety goes viral after she finds love in New York. 

The book came top for secondary school pupils in a survey of 725,000 children at 3,300 schools.

The annual study by Keith Topping, education research professor at Dundee University, found the novel was the seventh most popular among primary school children.

It suggests reading habits have changed dramatically since a time when young girls would settle down with an E Nesbit or C S Lewis title.