general

• quick summary - successful wellness guru samantha miller publishes an essay on her life-changing sexual experience with her best friend in high school; the same best friend who later claims that this encounter was not consensual. sam has to deal with the consequences of sharing her 'truth', in a story that keeps spiraling out and out of her control.
• key themes - influencer culture, fame, truth and memory, sexual assault, female friendships.
• fav character - I would not say favorite because it is complicated to 'like' a character in this book, but I was very intrigued by lisa.

interests

• what i found interesting - this was a spectacular book! while it is not considered a thriller it read as one (I finished it in two days). the reflections on the meaning of 'truth' for different people concerning the same situation was such a thought-provoking topic. often throughout my reading, I felt quite uncomfortable and second-guessed every conflict I was involved in lol wondering if I ever behaved like sam. the multiple times when she denies someone else's version of a situation and vice-versa really foreshadowed the ending; I was not expecting it!
• fav quote - "whats that thing you always say? 'this is my truth'. well, it seems like there's your truth and there's my truth and there's nothing in between. (...) how can anything be real then? how do you know what's real?"

further reading

• follow-up context research - it would be interesting to read further on studies about influencer culture, notably the wellness and self-development side of the internet.

rating

• 4.5/5 - this was such an insane read! as someone who was once really deep into self-development, it was so funny to read sam's extremely cliche and overdone sentences on self-love, inner-work, wellness, and other adjacent buzzwords. the whole story felt like a trainwreck, and I could not stop reading it. if I had to criticize it, I would have to say that I was able to guess two 'plot twists' (the mysterious troll and the letters), and how I was often left wondering if it was plausible for these forthy-year olds to be so hung up on high school drama (sam's voice read like she was about ten to fifteen years younger). I was also confused about lisa's reaction sometimes and how her dialogue with sam seemed a bit funny (?) but she is such an unreliable narrator that you could not believe anything she said. all and all, a well-executed piece on memory, truth, female relationships and the dangers of fame.