Unfollow Me by Charlotte Duckworth
Genre: Thriller/Women’s Fiction
Published: March 10th 2020 by Crooked Lane Books
Swathi’s Rating: 4.5/5
Verdict: A unique plot, completely unreliable characters, with so many twists and turns!
About the Book:
You Can’t Stop Watching Her.
Violet Young is a hugely popular journalist-turned-mummy-vlogger, with three young children, a successful husband and a million subscribers on YouTube who tune in daily to watch her everyday life unfold.
Until the day she’s no longer there.
But one day she disappears from the online world – her entire social media presence deleted overnight, with no explanation. Has she simply decided that baring her life to all online is no longer a good idea, or has something more sinister happened to her?
But do you really know who Violet is?
Told from the perspectives of her most avid fans, obsessed with finding out the truth, their search quickly reveals a web of lies, betrayal, and shocking consequences…
Swathi’s Thoughts:
The story begins with the famous internet sensation, mommy vlogger Violet suddenly missing from the world wide web! All her social channels are gone and her fans are going frantic. No one knows where’s she and what happened to her and her husband Harry doesn’t seem to be bothered by his wife’s media-disappearance at all!
Amongst Violet’s several die hard fans is Lily, a single mom of Archie who is obsessed with Violet as she believes it was Violet who inspired her during her darkest hours. She would do anything to find out what happened to Violet, no matter how close she must have to go to find out the truth. Even if it’s called ‘stalking’.
Meet Yvonne, a wedding photographer who is struggling so hard to get pregnant in her 40s and slowly going out of options. She is also equally obsessed with Violet’s family, but for entirely different reasons. She would do anything to find violet, even if it means going against her husband Harry!
Told from the PoVs of both the women, Unfollow Me is a roller-coaster ride structured so brilliantly to hook the reader right from the first page. The author has thrown in several glimpses of what happens in social channels including comments from blogs, and newspaper clippings to induce the curiosity of the book. It gets very interesting as the reader is as clueless as Violet’s fans about her disappearance and each chapter gives us yet another shocking suspense that’s totally unexpected!
I lost count of the number of times the plot blew me away, but with the short and razor sharp chapters, Charlotte Duckworth brilliantly manipulates her readers. It’s terrifying to realize what the social media could do to your life if not treated properly. The author has touched some very sensitive matters including late abortion, sexual harassment at workplace, postnatal depression, deceit and infidelity. The narration might be a tad bit confusing to the readers at some places as it goes back and forth between the characters and also to their past and present.
I’m so glad I chose to read this book and very easily became a fan of the author. For sure I’ll be following her and what she writes in the future. Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my ARC. All opinions mine.
Meet the Author:
Charlotte Duckworth is a graduate of the Faber Academy’s acclaimed six-month ‘Writing a Novel’ course. Charlotte started her career working as an interiors and lifestyle journalist, writing for a wide range of consumer magazines and websites.
Alongside writing, she now runs her own website design studio.
Her debut novel, THE RIVAL, was published by Quercus in the UK and US in September 2018.
Her second novel, UNFOLLOW ME, was published by Quercus in the UK in June 2019. It will be published by Crooked Lane Books in the US in March 2020.
She is currently working on her third book, THE PERFECT FATHER, which will be published by Quercus in 2020.
She lives in Surrey with her partner and young daughter.
