Name: tori's review of Followers by Megan Angelo
Item: Followers
Rating: 4
Author: tori

Megan Angelo

‘An eerie masterpiece’ Christina Dalcher ‘Think Black Mirror with a comic twist’ OK! When everyone is watching you can run, but you can’t hide...

Followers

tori

FOUR STARRED REVIEWS! "SPECTACULAR" --Publishers Weekly "AN ADDICTIVE TREAT" --Kirkus Reviews "AN INTRICATE AND BRAVE STORY" --Booklist "ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF 2020" --BookPage "If anyone is going to explore a future version of our high-tech, internet-obsessed culture, please let it be Megan Angelo. Followers is pure gold." --Abbi Jacobson, bestselling author and cocreator of Broad City An electrifying story of two ambitious friends, the dark choices they make and the stunning moment that changes the world as we know it forever Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss--a striving, wannabe A-lister--who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. So what if Orla and Floss's methods are a little shady--and sometimes people get hurt? Their legions of followers can't be wrong. Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity--twelve million loyal followers--Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks. Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we'll never meet, what we really crave is genuine human connection.

Emily C Peterson

Cindy

** spoiler alert **
           Don't let the bright cover or the very relevant topic of social media fool you: this one is pretty bleak.

Followers is a dystopic novel. Except instead of knowing exactly what has plunged America into the dystopia that Marlow is living, we don't completely uncover those differences until the very end. The pacing is interesting, in that Orla and Floss' story keeps escalating toward a doomed crash-and-burn of an uncertain "future", and Marlow, decades later, is furiously pacing backward to uncover the mysteries of her past. Which means that, as the reader, we're scrambling to get to the middle of the timeline, aka the real meat of the story, aka The Spill, aka where it all goes horribly wrong. Unlike Fahrenheit 451 or Hunger Games, we're not exactly certain on what exactly Marlow is running from until she has already escaped. 85% of the novel = so what happened in The Spill, anyway?

This narrative structure (whatever the opposite of in medias res is!), though unusual, does seem to work. Or at least, it still held my attention as I shuttled between Floss/Orla and Marlow, eager to cut to the middle.

However compelling the story may be, the main characters (Floss, Orla) were so unlikable that I had kept reading solely to uncover the puzzle pieces. It was hard to reconcile why Floss and Orla were as strong friends as the story suggested; even discounting all the awful shit Floss did, the parasitic nature of their relationship felt icky, such that you could see all the red flags from a mile away. Orla herself isn't exactly a victim, as she knowingly benefits from her relationship with Floss and willfully ignores her own warning signs.

The ending left me partially-satisfied (whelmed? Yeah, let's say whelmed.), in that I was glad Marlow got to find Orla (though, I had cottoned onto the possibility that Orla had some sort of connection to Marlow earlier on), but I couldn't really buy the ending as a reunion of Floss and Orla's "friendship". Even when Floss makes it to Atlantis, her flaws and ugly habits that had poisoned their friendship are still evident: she overstays her welcome, she wills herself not to interrupt Orla and Marlow's reunion but her venom is still well and alive.

Overall, I actually did enjoy reading this. The outrageousness of the plot and development didn't feel eyeroll inducing, but rather tongue-in-cheek, due to the smart and self-aware tone in the narration and refusal to claim a moral high ground. Followers doesn't make any pretensions about the vapidity or the trash fire nature of its own characters. However, the dystopia that Angelo has created doesn't feel prescient or ominous in the way that 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 or even the Hunger Games aimed to communicate about government control and privacy and free speech. Followers doesn't feel like it's trying to make a statement or even tread into political territory (siphoning off Atlantic City as the de facto District 13 of the USA? Right.), but rather, it feels like it's trying to say something about our intrinsic, emotional need for real connection. Hopefully we don't have to wait 35 years to reconcile that need.

Amanda Furlan

3.5 stars. The ending fell a little flat for me

Devin Mainville

I guess I’m not very good at reading synopses because as much as I knew I wanted to read Followers, I actually had no idea what it was about. I thought I would be getting a satirical look at the way social media is affecting our culture, which I did, but Followers is also speculative science fiction that looks at that effect thirty-something years into the future.

Maybe it was the disconnect from my expectations, but Followers ultimately disappointed me. I found parts of it interesting and compelling, but it's ultimately less about our addiction to sharing than it is about female ambition, which I would normally enjoy, but didn’t love what it had to say about it. The sci-fi part also introduced some very dark ideas that it never really addressed – namely forcing children into situations they can offer no consent to.

I still enjoyed reading it and am glad I did, it just wasn’t what I wanted.

Chelsea White

Really interesting concept, I tore through the book to pick up the threads of connection for everyone. The Spill was a little anticlimactic compared to what I had envisioned considering how much it impacted American society in the book.
Kind of chilling to think about all the tech we have that’s kind of paving the way to the devices. Doubly chilling to think about how manufactured fame is in Constellation, but also how manufactured fame is now (although not as blatant, I’m looking at you obvious fake relations between celebrities that somehow get passed as real). I can’t imagine having a device that acts as my intuition that can also tell me anything I want to know, including how many strangers are paying attention to me at any given moment. So weird, so creepy, but I could 100% see it happening by 2051.
And honestly this was a weird book to be in the middle of as the insurrection was happening at the Capitol building, knowing how much social media played into the building tide of everything that led up to it.

Jolie

I found Followers fascinating to read. Mainly because I can 100% picture what happened in the book happening in real life. I did wonder how Marlow, Orla, and Floss were all tied together. But I wasn't expecting what was revealed. It shocked me. I did find parts of the book to be a little hard to believe (the whole scene with Marlow being tied up in the car was a big one) but overall, it was an interesting read. Scary but interesting.

Paige Morgan

Followers is a creepy and skillfully executed half-satirical, half-speculative "what does the future of social media look like?" I'm delighted with Angelo's ability to write characters with a range of perspectives/desires/relationships to social media, and make me care enough about them to want to keep reading, even while I'm horrified by them. Followers is notable as well as for a terrifying view of what a world-changing cataclysmic social media event might look like. I went back and reread, before sending this review, because a month after my first read, I still found myself thinking about moments from the book.

Allison Garber

Amulya Garimella

Catherine Duplessis

Jessica Ford

Anna Bold

Connie

Amy Thibodeau

An electrifying story of two ambitious friends, the dark choices they make and the stunning moment that changes the world as we know it forever Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss--a striving wannabe A-lister--who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. So what if Orla and Floss's methods are a little shady--and sometimes people get hurt? Their legions of followers can't be wrong. Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity--twelve million loyal followers--Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks. Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we'll never meet, what we really crave is genuine human connection.

A Novel

Alexandra Sklar

Amy Thomson

Taryn

An electrifying story of two ambitious friends, the dark choices they make and the profound moment that changes the meaning of privacy forever If anyone is going to explore a future version of our high-tech, internet-obsessed culture, please let it be Megan Angelo. Followers is pure gold." - Abbi Jacobson, bestselling author and cocreator of Broad City Orla Cadden dreams of literary success, but she's stuck writing about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Orla has no idea how to change her life until her new roommate, Floss - a striving, wannabe A-lister-comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they so desperately crave. But it's only when Orla and Floss abandon all pretense of ethics that social media responds with the most terrifying feedback of all: overwhelming success. Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity - twelve million loyal followers - Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything, even horrible things, to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks. Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we'll never meet, what we really crave is genuine human connection.

tori &
Followers by Megan Angelo

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