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Do you know how many social media followers you have? Do you care? Even if you do, I bet you’re not as obsessed as the central characters in Followers by Megan Angelo (Graydon House). 

Flipping back and forth between the years 2015 and 2051, Followers follows three women — Orla, Floss and Marlow — in three locations (New York City, Constellation, and Atlantis) as they exploit the internet for fame and profit.

As I began to read Followers, I was skeptical as to whether this would be the right book for me to review. Was this a dystopian novel? Not generally my wheelhouse. Normally, I’m a commercial fiction, mystery, thriller, historical novel kind of gal. Nevertheless, I persisted and was quickly sucked into the two worlds Angelo masterfully creates — one as comfortable as my favorite pair of shoes, the other so frightening and dark I hope she’s not clairvoyant.

At the height of the social media explosion in 2015, with her novel stalled and frustrated by her meager influence as a blogger of dreary movie-star gossip, Orla takes a roommate — Floss, a celebrity wannabe. Hoping Floss has literary agent connections, Orla sits on the couch in her New York City rental creating a robust online presence and loyal audience primarily for Floss and her boyfriend, Aston.

To their surprise, they’re successful … with all three becoming famous overnight both online and on television, where they create a docu-series about falling in love. Money flows in, along with the drugs, parties, shopping sprees, and an insatiable desire for fame to never end.

Fast forward to 2051, Constellation, CA, a manufactured “all-celebrity town where the people are always on camera” and wear devices on their wrists that track their actions and feelings. With more than twelve million followers, Marlow is a star on the Constellation Network where she promotes Hysterl, a pill to make people who feel “troubled” feel normal. But when Marlow stops taking the pill, she becomes clear-eyed and discovers something amiss with her DNA. 

Seeking answers to the roots of her ancestry, Marlow escapes to New York City. There she discovers something devastating had happened in 2016, the year the government took control of social media. For their own protection and preservation, Americans stopped sharing, liking, pinning. Their “smartphones” sat idle and dark, whatever a smartphone was. 

Ultimately, Marlow’s search takes her to Atlantis, a city purposefully walled in by the government to contain not just illegal immigrants, but also traitors who protest the government’s overreach and new internet. There she learns the number of followers she has means nothing. Rather, the truest and strongest link is the one she cultivates with family.

Chapter by chapter, as she switches decades, Angelo lures us in with familiar references to contemporary cultural trends and everyday gadgets and then throws down the gauntlet asking readers to envision what could happen if all that goes haywire. 

To an extent, Angelo is an open book, sprinkling her political leanings judiciously through the plot. Suffice it to say, Followers will not be the first to incorporate current events into novels of this era. We need to get used to it no matter how we swing.

So, is Followers a dystopian novel? I’ll leave it to readers to decide. What I can say is that Angelo succeeded in one thing for sure: making me … a follower. Imagine that.

Followers is available for purchase.


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About Megan Angelo

 width=Megan has written about television, film, women and pop culture, and motherhood for publications including The New York Times (where she helped launch city comedy coverage), Glamour (where she was a contributing editor and wrote a column on women and television), Elle, The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, and Slate. She is a native of Quakertown, Pennsylvania and a graduate of Villanova University. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her family. Followers is her first novel.

Valerie Taylor, author of "What’s Not Said" and "What’s Not True"

Now in her third act, Valerie Taylor is an author and book reviewer. With degrees from Sacred Heart University and Simmons University, Valerie had a long career in the financial services industry as a marketer and writer. After her divorce, she spread her wings, relocating her career from Connecticut to Boston and then Seattle. When she retired, she resettled in her home state to be near her two grown children and granddaughter. An avid reader, she also enjoys practicing tai chi and being an expert sports spectator. Her first novel, What's Not Said, was published in 2020, and its sequel, What's Not True, will be released in August 2021. See what she’s reading at her website.

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