41yhclbco78y2cgp4tkd8hrcd3nuSynopsis: “Follow your heart and speak your truth.’ For Samantha Miller’s young fans – her ‘girls’ – she’s everything they want to be. She’s an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honour their ‘truth’. 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. Determined to speak her truth and bare all to her adoring fans, she’s written an essay about her sexual awakening as a teenager, with her female best friend, Lisa. She’s never told a soul but now she’s telling the world. The essay goes viral. But then – years since they last spoke – Lisa gets in touch to say that she doesn’t remember it that way at all. Her memory of that night is far darker. It’s Sam’s word against Lisa’s – so who gets to tell the story? Whose ‘truth’ is really a lie? Riveting, compulsive and bold, IDOL 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. And it asks us to consider how two memories of the same event can differ, and how effortlessly we choose which stories to believe.“

My Review

I do love a novel set around social media, so when I read a review by  Jo @ Jo’s Book Blog I knew I wanted to read it. It’s going to be a hard book to review as I really don’t want to give away any spoilers.

The story is told from Samantha’s point of view starting in January 2022 with an Insta following  nearing 3 million! Sam is on a tour promoting her latest book enjoying the celebrity status and all that goes with it. She wants to hit that huge number, and so of course does her manager Jane. You can imagine the disbelief and ensuring panic that occurs when that email arrives!

I liked the way the story was told through flashbacks and ongoing damage control to her reputation and career in 2022. I enjoyed discovering more about Sam and her best friend Lisa, and desperately wanted to know why they hadn’t spoken for so long. What had happened between them? Was there more to the story and was Sam’s truth the real thing or was Lisa’s?

I definitely recommend this one if you enjoy contemporary novels set around social media.

Book 6 of 20 Books of Summer