Piratförlaget, Sweden 2013, 320 pages
Original title: Lex bok
Genre: young adult fiction
A multi-layered, contemporary story about being young and the choice between being cool or being true to yourself and starting to take responsibility for your own life. Lex Novel is a smart, shrewd, humorous portrayal of today’s society, where there’s an unhealthy focus on the future – and personal branding and entrepreneurial skills are a must.
Lex is a verbal outsider in her last year of high school. She has the answer to just about everything and many theories about the state of things. Worst of all, according to Lex, is all the badgering at school about entrepreneurship, not to mention all the idiotic bloggers whose only purpose is to spread their personal brand.
As a protest, Lex prefers to lay in bed at home, fantasizing and smoking while listening to heavy music. She lives with her single, Zumba-loving mother, while her self-loathing father is in jail. Jonatan, who is gay, is her only friend – and her total opposite.
One day her mother brings home her new boyfriend, Bruno, and, to Lex’s horror, he starts spending a lot of time there. Bruno writes books for young people, and is constantly on the hunt for new ideas. Lex thinks he is highly annoying and intrusive.
He father encourages her to start making up a tragic life story for Bruno, who soon starts writing a novel ”based on the true story” of Lex’s horrible childhood. Lex is amused − until she finds out Bruno is moving in with them.
Motivated by hatred and a wish for vengeance, she decides to out-do Bruno’s ridiculous youth novel by creating a blog that tells exactly the same story.
She creates a fictitious blogger, Maya, with fashion tips from Jonatan. Maya is the total opposite of Lex: serious, vulnerable, and dramatic. The combination of Maya’s extravagant looks, her gripping stories and Lex’s political engagement soon draws public attention to the blog.
Lex starts to show up as Maya at celebrity parties, is interviewed in magazines and asked out by men. Gradually, she starts to publish more and more of her real life story on the blog. She opens up about her old wounds and it gets harder and harder to keep Maya and Lex apart.
She soon finds herself drawn into a rollercoaster of events she can’t control.
Lex doesn’t want to be a role model, even though the blog has become important to many people. Her opinions even incite the idiots at school to revolt against the sacred student graduation party.
Lex wants to stop blogging. She’s already broken up with her father and is arguing with Jonatan.
When her mother finds out about her lies, which have ruined Bruno’s career, she throws Lex out and she takes refuge in her father’s abandoned flat.
Will she be able to manage, alone, when all the lies are revealed?
And who is Lex now, when she’s no longer in the public gaze?
Check the Book trailer here.