Followers by Megan Angelo

Have you ever read a book thinking it's going to be about one thing and then you're in it and realize it's about something completely different?  I looked at the cover of Followers by Megan Angelo and thought it was going to be some fluffy romantic comedy about Instagram or Twitter love.

Instead I got a dystopian novel about a future in which the world has changed dramatically after an amorphous event called The Spill caused people to lose their faith in the internet.  It switches time from 2015, right before the spill, to 2055, 35 years later.  We mostly follow Floss, an wanna be Instagram star, and Orla, her publicist/personal assistant, and, in the later time period. Floss's daughter Marlow.  Through these three women we see the ups and downs of life in the spotlight, whether or not that spotlight is desired or not.

I didn't love this book. I didn't hate it. I did think it was REALLY long and was not entirely sure why a more ruthless editor didn't chop a lot of it, including the last three chapters.  I think I mostly was not sure if I needed a preachy novel about social media and our everyday reliance on screens. There's a global pandemic, my husband and I have been quarantined for five days after my husband went to take a test and the 24-48 hour window of getting results was obviously optimist, and I ask you what the fuck we are supposed to be doing with our time?  I work on the computer. I can't get paper books from the library for the time being, so I'm relying heavily on ebooks, so I'm reading on my Kindle. We have watched more television in the last three months than in the last ten years. I'm obviously not in the headspace to be preached at about this particular facet of my life.

But I do think about it. What could be the absolute worst thing to happen if all of my medical records, texts, emails, and other electronic records were shared with people I love?  My reddit post history of complaining about my husband's dietary restrictions? The medical records of the abortion I had when I was eighteen?  This here blog where I vent about a childhood spent in anxiety and hunger?  I don't know. I feel like I'm a pretty open book, but I bet there's something out there.  

So I'll leave you with that. I don't think I'll recommend this book, but it would be a good a book club book if your group is willing to read 400 pages that should have been 250.  If you like your authors to be quite pointed in their messaging, you might like this one more than I did.