Follow Me

I was immediately intrigued by the premise of this book -- a social media obsessed influencer uploads a constant array of posts featuring her seemingly perfect life to her millions of readers. But along with her fame, fans and free products, she's also attracted a stalker.

The story is told by three narrators: Audrey, Cat and the stalker, known only as "Him". These three tell different sides of the story and the switching between them was done well. I particularly liked that this story focuses on the effects of sharing too much on social media and I felt the short chapters kept things moving.

Unfortunately, I found the main characters to be one-dimensional and an unlikable duo. Audrey is a classic, cliched, obnoxious narcissist and Cat is her socially awkward childhood friend who always bends to Audrey's will. We're told these two are friends, but I just didn't buy it and found it hard to sympathize with either one.

Barber provides good red herrings to throw readers off balance and a decent twist which bumped my rating up a bit, but I thought more could have been done with the premise. Instead, the plot gets stuck on mundane issues and repetitive dialogue and finishes with a neat ending that wasn't quite satisfying.

Overall, this was a decent story that gives readers food for thought about their own digital footprint but more tension, creepiness and characters I could root for would have garnered a higher rating from me.

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to the publisher for providing me with a complimentary digital copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 3 stars

Author: Kathleen Barber

Genre: Suspense

Type: e-Book

Source: NetGalley

Publisher: Gallery Books

First Published: February 25, 2020

Book Description from GoodReads: From the author of Are You Sleeping—soon to be an Apple TV series—comes a cautionary tale of oversharing in the social media age for fans of Jessica Knoll and Caroline Kepnes’s You.

Everyone wants new followers…until they follow you home.

Audrey Miller has an enviable new job at the Smithsonian, a body by reformer Pilates, an apartment door with a broken lock, and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers to bear witness to it all. Having just moved to Washington, DC, Audrey busies herself impressing her new boss, interacting with her online fan base, and staving off a creepy upstairs neighbor with the help of the only two people she knows in town: an ex-boyfriend she can’t stay away from and a sorority sister with a high-powered job and a mysterious past.

But Audrey’s faulty door may be the least of her security concerns. Unbeknownst to her, her move has brought her within striking distance of someone who’s obsessively followed her social media presence for years—from her first WordPress blog to her most recent Instagram Story. No longer content to simply follow her carefully curated life from a distance, he consults the dark web for advice on how to make Audrey his and his alone. In his quest to win her heart, nothing is off-limits—and nothing is private.

With “compelling, suspenseful” (Liz Nugent) prose, Kathleen Barber’s electrifying new thriller will have you scrambling to cover your webcam and digital footprints.