But other than that I loved it and I am already mentally drumming my things waiting for the next one. IDOL by Louise O’ Neill published with Bantam Press May 12th and is described as ‘riveting, compulsive and bold…interrogates our relationship with our heroes and explores the world of online influencers, asking how well we can ever really know those whose carefully curated profiles we follow online. She's an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honour their 'truth'. She has released books, and has a strong online presence, guiding her "girls" on how they can be the best in their lives. By the end there were two characters that really stole my affections, one of which managed to bring a huge smile to my face as they showed their true cunning and strength.

This author is just a master at creating these amazingly complex, flawed human beings and you hate them but relate to them all at the same time for the perfectly imperfect way they swan through life.This led me to believe this would be a book about a lesbian MC and possibly closeted best friend dealing with these allegations, but this is genuinely one of the straightest books I've ever read.

Videos and reels like Observe While I Try on These 75 New Outfits, or Watch Me Obsessively Clean My House/Heat Up My dinner/Unbox Expensive Stuff I've Been Given For Free is big business these days and this story very much taps into that. Idol was dark, deceptive, and entirely engaging — Samantha Miller has built an empire as an influencer. O’Neill is asking us, gently but persistently: “are people like Sam Miller rotten from the start, and that is what draws them to influencing, or does the influencing rot them from within?Her three million followers hang on her every word - she's an oracle, telling them how to be their best, true selves. Her first novel, Only Ever Yours, was released in 2014 and won the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, the Eilís Dillon Award for a First Book and the Bookseller's inaugural YA Book Prize.

And it asks us to consider how two memories of the same event can differ, and how effortlessly we choose which stories to believe. But then - years since they last spoke - Lisa gets in touch to say that she doesn't remember it that way at all. Yet she has built her dream house in the mirror image of Sam’s childhood home and named her daughters Martha and Maya – “Her baby names; she’d told Lisa that a million times when they were teenagers,” thinks Sam on meeting the twins.Samantha Miller 40, is an influencer and has 3 million followers on Instagram (mostly white and female), she travels the world as a motivational speaker and her new book Chaste is top of the bestseller list. There’s another character who is nominally the primary antagonist of the book—I won’t reveal their name, for spoiler reasons, though it’s pretty easy to figure out who they are given all the breadcrumbs. Sam is a successful “wellness” influencer/grifter who, after being accused of rape by her childhood best friend, must scramble to save her career in the age of trial by social media. I didn’t fall in love with any of them, but they were compelling to read and held my attention well. We start by meeting our protagonist, Samantha Miller, a hugely successful social media lifestyle guru.

I must say I was a bit disappointed as it wasn’t as good as I was expecting in the lead up to its arrival. Shout out to the Sam Miller I knew when I taught in England (aside from being a blonde white woman, she was nothing like this Sam Miller). Sam is a complex character, projecting a public persona while feeling completely differently inside, her self-centredness concealing profound fragility and loneliness. We’ve seen plenty of stories of successful white men being accused of sexual assault, so seeing it from a female perspective could have been interesting.And her career is booming: she’s just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists and she’s appearing at sell-out events.