The at-a-glance description of “The Girl Behind” would be clean, somewhat plain, with an early-morning breeziness. The second thing that hits a split-second after the initial color-scheme take-in is, of course: “SQUIRREL!!!” As of current, the newest post contains a photo of a plush squirrel toy in natural surroundings. This, of course, is a surefire way to get my attention. Is it just me, or do squirrel-lovers generally have cute and interesting blogs?
So, personal preferences aside, I move on to the rest of the blog. A quick glance at the subtitle tells me that the author is a “33 year-old English girl.” Hmm. Sounds interesting! Scrolling down to take in a bit of the content-to-link-to-photo ratio, it turns out that our English author (she chooses to remain anonymous, and simply calls herself ‘The Girl Behind’) has a nice combination of all three. There are a few posts with just one photo and a caption, as well as a proper scattering of links where appropriate. The rest of it is pure text. Girl Behind ranges from reviewing theatrical productions and other blogs, to reminiscing on earlier years, to current happenings in her personal life. What is written is spontaneous and does not follow a specific “chronology”. In fact, my favorite post so far is “Five tips for a woman…” It’s short, funny, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything posted before or after it.
As I mentioned earlier, there isn’t much to the design and layout of the site. It’s a premade template (I worship premades too, so no qualms there), and a very simple one at that. Like I said before, the site possesses a breakfast-in-bed sort of zing to it. Maybe tea-time in Great Britain? The colors are nice, practical, and easy on the eyes. Not much else to the design. Personally, I would have liked to see a layout centered around that stuffed squirrel! It would have definitely added to the at-a-glance appeal, but even without, the blog is just fine.
Checking out Girl Behind’s profile, I can see that she has four separate blogs. However, ‘The Girl Behind’ is the only one with actual content. The other three have a single post: “x”. This is endlessly confusing to me. Perhaps she decided to integrate all three of her older blogs to create ‘The Girl Behind’? Back to the main blog, Girl Behind links to some of her favorite blogs, a webpage full of squirrel photos (squirrel lovers must-see), blog-ranking sites (TWR included), and her current leisure reading.
Overall, I can say that ‘The Girl Behind’ is a nice blog. Decent, clean, and well-written. There is something appealing about the way it jumps from one topic to another from post to post. However, it comes off as perhaps a little too light-hearted. Or maybe simply not “earthy” enough? I keep mentally comparing ‘The Girl Behind’ to a scone. Is it a blog? Yes. Is there anything horribly wrong with it? Of course not! But I can’t help but think that a little pat of butter or jam would do it a world of good. I give it three out of five stars. Good effort, nice for dreamy reading, but nothing overly extravagant or “new”.The Girl Behind