Review – Follow Me by Kathleen Barber

Posted December 18, 2020 by Carole in 2020 Audiobook Challenge, 2020 Library Love Challenge, Audiobook, Book Reviews / 11 Comments

Follow Me by Kathleen Barber
Narrated by Corey Brill, Erin Moon, Emily Tremaine, and Kathleen Barber
Publisher: Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication Date: February 25, 2020
Date Read: December 15, 2020
Length: 336 pages / 10 hours 13 minutes
Source: NetGalley / Library
★★★★☆

From the author of Truth Be Told (formerly titled Are You Sleeping)—now an Apple TV series of the same name—comes a cautionary tale of oversharing in the social media age for fans of Jessica Knoll and Caroline Kepnes’s You.

Everyone wants new followers…until they follow you home.

Audrey Miller has an enviable new job at the Smithsonian, a body by reformer Pilates, an apartment door with a broken lock, and hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers to bear witness to it all. Having just moved to Washington, DC, Audrey busies herself impressing her new boss, interacting with her online fan base, and staving off a creepy upstairs neighbor with the help of the only two people she knows in town: an ex-boyfriend she can’t stay away from and a sorority sister with a high-powered job and a mysterious past.

But Audrey’s faulty door may be the least of her security concerns. Unbeknownst to her, her move has brought her within striking distance of someone who’s obsessively followed her social media presence for years—from her first WordPress blog to her most recent Instagram Story. No longer content to simply follow her carefully curated life from a distance, he consults the dark web for advice on how to make Audrey his and his alone. In his quest to win her heart, nothing is off-limits—and nothing is private.

With “compelling, suspenseful” (Liz Nugent) prose, Kathleen Barber’s electrifying new thriller will have you scrambling to cover your webcam and digital footprints.

 My Review

I thought that this book was really good!  I have had a digital copy of this book for quite a while but hadn’t picked it up yet for some reason.   Recently, I came across the book again while browsing my library’s collection of audiobooks and decided that it was time to give it a try.  I am so glad that I finally got around to reading this book!  I was hooked by the story right away and it kept me guessing until the very end.

Everybody loves Audrey.  She has hundreds of thousands of followers online and is often recognized.  She is hired by a museum in Washington DC to handle the social media for a new exhibit.   She moves to a new city where her old boyfriend and friend from college currently live so she’s not alone.  Audrey has lost friends due to her oversharing online and it was eye-opening to see just what went into her carefully created image.  
We see this story from three points of view.   We see things from Audrey’s perspective and also from her friend Cat’s point of view.  Cat is much more serious than Audrey and sometimes resents Audrey’s constant need to be out doing something fun.   The third narrator is the man stalking Audrey.  We see different aspects of this man’s life and get to know how he sees Audrey but his identity kept me guessing until the very end.
I thought that this book was really exciting.  I had absolutely no idea who Audrey’s stalker until the author wanted me to know.  There were several characters that I suspected but I just couldn’t pin it down.  I was also very interested in the relationship between Cat and Audrey.  Cat seemed to fluctuate between admiring Audrey and being annoyed by her attitude.  I loved how many layered this story was and I found it really hard to quit thinking about even when I wasn’t reading it.
I thought that the narrating team of Corey Brill, Erin Moon, and Emily Tremaine did a fantastic job with this story.  I really felt like each narrator was able to bring their character to life.  I like that they used three different narrators to perform this book since it made the shift between perspectives flow easily.  I thought that all of the narrators had a very pleasant voice that was easy to listen to for hours at a time. 
I would recommend this book to others.  I thought that this was a very well done thriller that kept me guessing and felt relevant in today’s social media-obsessed world.  I wouldn’t hesitate to read more of this author’s work in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Gallery, Pocket Books via NetGalley and borrowed a copy of the audiobook from my local library.

About the Author

Kathleen Barber’s first novel, Truth Be Told (formerly titled Are You Sleeping), has been adapted for television by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. Kathleen was raised in Galesburg, Illinois, and is a graduate of the University of Illinois and Northwestern University School of Law. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and son. Follow Me is her second novel.

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11 responses to “Review – Follow Me by Kathleen Barber”

  4. sherry fundin

    i have seen some id tv shows that have dealt with the whole social media dilemma…and sharing too much information, trolling….i think i would love to read this one too