Within the first few pages and I was giggling away at Heidi - her voice and the things she'd say, and the other characters in the story. Quirky might be the right word for Heidi, but I found her to be utterly charming. She's such a great character, with her mad obsession with fictional detective, Mycroft Christie, and her zany way of speaking. She really makes me happy. I couldn't help but laugh when she called her mom the 'Mothership' or when she'd carry on long, detailed and imaginary conversations with Mycroft Christie.When all of Heidi's friends start pairing up into couples, Heidi inadvertently admits to having a boyfriend. Instead of owning up to this almost-lie straightaway, she creates Gingerbread Ed, fictional (biscuit-y) boyfriend who embodies all of the characteristics (ingredients!) of the perfect boy for her. She goes to great lengths in order to maintain a realistic, if one-sided relationship with him, but things start going particularly wrong when Heidi's friends start telling Gingerbread Ed all their problems through email and instant message. How far will Heidi go to keep her imaginary boyfriend?There are some absolutely wonderful characters in Girl Meets Cake. Heidi, of course, but I really loved Betsy, the American owner of the cafe that Heidi works in. I think they have a great relationship together. Heidi's friends, The Leftover Squad, are all incredibly sweet and loyal. Together with Heidi's, they have a whole heap of relationship problems. From imaginary boyfriend, to cheating boyfriend to so-insecure-I'm-about-to-lose-my-boyfriend. All the pairings in this book seemed very true-to-life and I could really imagine myself hanging out with this fun group of friends.I absolutely adored the format of the book - with each chapter beginning with recipe - recipes to make a Heidi, one for an Imaginary Boyfriend, one for excellent detective work. With everyone telling Gingerbread Ed (and therefore telling Heidi) their problems, Heidi begins work immediately to gather more clues and solve the mysteries that surround her friends' relationship problems, but also work out who the mystery boy is who keeps emailing Heidi. Not being a Mycroft Christie standard of detective, it was really interesting to just follow along Heidi's bumbling path to solving these mysteries. Every twist and wrong turn she took, I took with her and I was left completely surprised at the very sweet and satisfying ending!I really, really loved this book! I urge you all to read it. I picked this up at the library because the premise sounded interesting and I liked the cover (hey, when you're flicking through a shelf of library books what else do you have to go on?) but it was so dreadful that I quickly gave up in disgust. Life is too short to finish stupid books. For a start the writing was incredibly annoying - the main character had the attention span of a squirrel and the vocabulary of a TV show for teenagers, written by adults. I couldn't even follow what she was saying half the time because she kept rambling off on random tangents, using irritatingly 'trendy' lingo littered with gimmicky lists and spaced out words like:SPECKTACKYOULAR, which was just weird, along with what I'm sure the author fondly imagined were hilariously quirky Capitalized Names (e.g. she referred to her parents throughout as Dad Man and The Mothership). It seemed like she (the author) was trying way too hard to show how young and fresh and hip her character was, so up-to-the-minute with the way the young'uns these days are talking on that thar internets, but only succeeded in making her insufferable.And yeah, the plot was complete tripe. 'Nuff said.
