Review: 'People Like Her' by Ellery Lloyd

Imagine having a million people following you, a million people expecting posts, intimate secrets, and immediate responses to their DMs. Imagine this is your job, non-stop, always on display. And now add to that an actual normal life, with two kids, a husband, bills to pay. And add to that weird occurrences and a growing sense of threat and you have yourself an amazing thriller. I didn't expect I would get sucked in by People Like Her and yet I finished it in one furious day of reading. Thanks to Mantle and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay.

Pub. Date: 21/1/2021
Publisher: Pan Macmillan; Mantle

Followed by millions. Hunted by one.

THE INFLUENCER 
I need to be liked. It’s my job

My personal brand is built on honesty. 
Family, friendship, cheering other mothers on when things get tough.
Doing it together - telling it like it really is – that’s what @the_Mamabare is all about. 

THE HUSBAND 
I just want a quiet life 

Her adoring followers feel like they understand my wife.
My wife certainly understands them. 
I know she is beautiful, smart, ambitious, charming. 
But she’s also a liar. 

THE FOLLOWER 
I want revenge 

The filter's about to drop. 
I’ve been watching you and your family very closely. 
You've ruined my life. 
Now I'm going to ruin yours.

I'm not the best at social media. The only platform I really, actually, enjoy is Tumblr, which is utterly uncoupled from my "real life" identity, i.e. it has nothing to do with my name, my work, where I live, with the products I buy. (Tumblr is a mess, yes, but it's our mess.) I have friends, however, who are very good at social media, the kinds of friends who have semi-professional Instagram profiles on which they display a highly curated image of their lives. It's all trips to the spa, visits to cafes, moments of heartbreak that are easily fixed, and hair crises. I am both in awe and in fear of people who are able to silo their lives into such different aspects. On the one hand, there is your actual life, and then on the other hand, there is the life you pretend to life. How do the two mix? Do we all know the second isn't real? Or does it become more and more real, the more people see it? These were just some of my own questions I coulnd't help think about as I was reading People Like Her. It is so easy to make fun of social media, to dismiss influencers, to complain about what they're doing to "the culture", etc. While a lot of those criticisms are correct, it belies the human work and the human feeling that lies behind it. Through the three points of view in their novel, Ellery Lloyd is actually able to both create some understanding for those who share their lives online and to show the utter vulnerability and danger that go hand in hand with it. 

Emmy Jackson, aka @the_mamabare, has got it made on Instagram with her million followers hanging on her every word as she shares the trials and tribulations of motherhood. Spilled milk, baby vomit on your shirt, two mismatched shoes, it all comes with the territory and Emmy is here to tell you that it's ok, that you're great for doing your best, that no one is perfect. Except her life isn't really that full of trials and tribulations. Her children don't really give her a hard time and she'd kind of prefer to be back in her Louboutins that slumming it in mom jeans. But she knows she's doing something right, not just because of the money coming in, but also because she really is helping mothers out there, right? Her husband, Dan, is not so sure. Still working on his second novel, almost a decade after the first, he's not really helping but he's also not sure sharing their life online, even if much of it is made up, is the right way to go. And then there is a third narrator, unnamed, in the shadows, who is watching and planning. With tragedy in their past, they have found their perfect focus for revenge: Emmy. This person will do anything, is willing to consider anything, in order to pay Emmy back for everything they themselves have lost because of her. As these three narrators hurtle closer and closer to disaster, everything begins to unravel. People Like Her packs quite an incredible punch at times, not flinching away from the difficulties of motherhood, even the heartbreaking sorrow and stress of it at times, and the dangers of social media. 

Ellery Llyod, a married writing-duo, honestly went so much harder than I expected them to, and I loved her for it. This was my first time reading a book by them but it certainly won't be my last. When I found out there was a married duo behind the moniker 'Ellery Lloyd' I genuinely reassessed the book and realised it made sense that the separate voices of Emmy and Dan came through so strongly and believably. I can never help but wonder whether writing about messy marriages functions like couples counselling, but I'll never know. While the separate narrative voices came through strongly, at no point did the novel feel disjointed or anything like that as I might have feared had I known in advance. It flows very well, with quick but considerate pacing, and loads of little extra storylines and beats that made the novel feel really rich. So often, when reading thrillers, I pick up the breadcrumbs laid out for me and then successfully predict the ending. In the case of People Like Her, I repeatedly went 'Oh ok, I see you, a is b and c is going to happen next', only to be completely wrong. And not wrong because Ellery Lloyd threw some wild twist in there, but quite simply because the twists they employed were ones I hadn't considered. These twists don't come out of left field, they make sense for the story that they're writing, and because of that I loved being wrong. As such, I was on the edge of my seat till the last word. I honestly had a great time reading People Like Her and may have to now put all my social media to private.

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

People Like Her is a gripping thriller about motherhood, loss, and social media, told through the eyes of three narrators with stakes in the game. I'd wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone with even the littlest taste for the thrilling.