People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd

Hello everyone.  I hope your year is off to a good start and I certainly hope it's better than last year!

Are you a big tech person? My niece and nephew are fluent in cell phones, excuse me, they say it's just "phones"...saying "cell phones" means you're old. We can be having a holiday dinner with lively, hysterical discussions and they'll still have their phones (notice I did it right that time, I'm so hip) under the table, their thumbs, obviously bionic, operating in a blur. I once told my niece that when I was little I had a vacuum cleaner (yes, even way back then), that when you pushed it, little colored wooden balls would pop up inside like a deranged popcorn popper.  Her response was that she can't help it if my generation is technologically challenged.  I think that was one of the first times I really felt old, well, that and the first time someone called me ma'am, but that's another story.

I recently read People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd.  This is a book about technology, well, the life of a well known Instagram personality.  Emmy is a high producing influencer that shows the tougher sides of being a mom. The book shows us the pressure people in that position are saddled with, always being driven to produce interesting and photogenic content. This book is a thriller so I feel no shame in telling you that Emmy has a stalker, one that tells the reader she's going to do terrible things to Emmy.  This ominous warning comes early in the book so I was reading frantically to find out what was going to happen. I'll tell you....nothing.  Okay, not nothing, you know I won't give you any spoilers but 97% of the book is about being an Instagram star.  Then when the villain is at their worst, they take time to garden.  A gardening villain?  Like some kind of possessed Snow White with birds flying seed packets around and Bambi nudging over the watering can?  This book was disappointing, at best.  Now, if I had known it was a book about being on Instagram and the pressures, great, I would have read it and really liked it.  Unfortunately the novel is being sold as a thriller making it completely miss the mark for me.

Sorry to start the new year on a negative note, but you may love People Like Her, especially if you live on your phone (see, did it again...guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.)