Social media? Check. Prominent social media influencer? Check. Two polar opposite long lost best friends who finally reunite again for the first time in nearly a decade? Check. Creepy stalker? Check. Mind games and twisted obsessions? Check. All the makings of a great thriller, nothing could go wrong, right?
Wrong. Although Follow Me has the kind of promising premise you can’t help but be drawn in by, Barber failed to deliver where it mattered most: a cautionary tale about social media in the age of overexposure. Sure, it’s fiction and meant to be a novel of suspense, but a foreward from Barber herself told us how this story was inspired by real-life events of professional hackers worldwide. Her knowledge on social media was very impressive, but that was the extent of my being impressed.
‘Follow Me’ Synopsis
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, D.C., 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 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.
Kathleen Barber’s electrifying new thriller will have you scrambling to cover your webcam and digital footprints.
That premise thrilled me, I was so excited to read it! With a boyfriend who’s been doing social media as a full time career since 2012, curating a life and career through social media myself, and being surrounded by multi-millionaire entrepreneurs who have cultivated their uber successful brands and businesses through social media as well, I know all too well the dangers of oversharing. My boyfriend and I are particularly careful when it comes to sharing minute details of our lives such as where we live or when we’re traveling, but those multi-millionaires and business men and women are not. In fact, they’re the complete opposite. My boyfriend and I are often baffled by their lack of care for how much they share, how lax they are about car and home security, and how trusting they are. The world is not a nice place, and I am very grateful my parents instilled that into me before I entered kindergarten. My parents made sure I knew the importance of privacy and protecting myself, how to take the proper security measures to ensure my safety. Regardless, it’s unsurprising that the synopsis piqued my interest, considering how close it hit home for me.
Follow Me is told by in first-person POV with three characters: Audrey, the woman who’s amassed a loyal following of one million on Instagram to become a social media star; Cat, the quirky, quiet, and insecure long-lost sorority sister; and Him, the man who’s stalking Audrey but who’s identity isn’t revealed to us until the final chapters. Now, I love multiple POV’s because it allows you to really get inside the mind of each character, find their reasoning for their actions, get a feel for who they are, but when you have a cast of characters as bland and surface level as this one, you’re doomed. Audrey was not only trusting, she was self-obsessed—and annoyingly so. I don’t mind selfish characters—in fact, I often love any sort of villain because they usually make the story—but I didn’t get that with this. Cat’s chapters I actually enjoyed slightly more because she was a little smarter and didn’t walk around with her head completely in the clouds. As far as Him goes, I was able to guess his identity fairly soon, which disappointed me because I would’ve loved to see something different, someone no one would’ve ever guessed. It would’ve made the stalking that much creepier and drummed up the suspense a little.
Speaking of suspense, there was none. I really enjoy slow-burning novels because you have to take your time with them, allow the suspense and dread to build quietly and slowly under the surface until it all comes to a boil and massive explosion. This book had none of that. There wasn’t really a mystery to solve besides the identity of Him.
That all may have been disappointing, but where Follow Me really failed, IMO, was delivering an important message; the message of the dangers of oversharing in a world where sharing is everything. I expected this to be a cautionary tale of some sort, but felt as though Barber fell flat in the delivery. Sure, some guy stalked Audrey because of who she was, but no one really learned anything in the end. I left the book feeling as though it confirmed what I already knew. I was disappointed because I wanted more, I wanted people to walk away second-guessing themselves and the relaxed nature of the information they share with the world. Maybe it’s because of how on-top of this I already am, but I don’t think this served as a proper cautionary tale for the digital age we live in.
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