People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd (2021) Here's some helpful advice for novelists who want to write this particular type of thriller.....
We mean the type of book where you don't know who you're supposed to dislike more.....the so-called protagonists or the the so-called villain of the piece.
We mean the the type of book where everybody, in some way or other, gets the reversal of fortune they've been more than asking for.
First off, if you've introduced characters that we don't give a rat's ass about, you'd damn well better make the story fly by at top speed......and never never grind things to a halt with pages and pages of their internal ruminations.
Cause remember......We. Don't. Care.
In this case, we especially don't care about Emmy Jackson, a social media superstar with millions upon millions of devoted followers who dote on her product endorsements and slavishly follow the photo chronicles of her family life.
She's known as "Mamabare" an 'Insta-Mum' who shares online, via instagram and twitter, every waking moment of life with her husband and her two children, Coco, a toddler girl and her newborn son, Bear.
Except everything in her carefully calibrated lifestyle is nothing but fake, staged photo ops designed to earn her lots of internet clicks, corporate sponsorship and piles of free stuff.
To put it simply......what's not to dislike about her?
With a life lived so publicly, it's inevitable that in a world teeming with revolting internet trolls, Emmy acquires an extra special stalker amid the usual suspects in Cyber geek-world.
This one grips a genuine ax to grind......holding Emmy responsible for the sad and terrible destruction of their family. And they've cooked up quite a horrible punishment to fit the perceived crime.
The book takes you on a deep dive into the world of social media "influencers" and to us, it's a fairly appalling tour through a hashtag universe of cynical hucksters faking a warped version of their lives to entertain an audience of suckers.
In fact, that's one of the main problems of this book.......it goes so far down the social media rabbit hole, it forgets it's supposed to be a thriller. It seems to work better as a nasty takedown of the influencers, even without the added attraction of that deeply damaged stalker.
Which brings us back to the advice we offered to other thriller novelists. "People Like Her" lacks the required compelling urgency to make us keep turning the pages. We could only read it in drips and drabs and couldn't have cared less what became of Emmy and her stalker.
So take note, cause we're only clicking out 2 stars (**). It's a bore from start to finish......and that goes for the lame, over used twist tacked on at the end.
Hashtag 'Wait-For-The-Movie'. We bet it'll move faster.
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