Synopsis:
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 who bear witness to it all. Having just moved from New York City to Washington, D.C., 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: the ex-boyfriend she can’t stay away from and a sorority sister with a high-powered job and mysterious past.
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 has obsessively followed her on social media for years — from her first WordPress blog post 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.
Everyone wants new followers . . . until they follow you home.
Review:
Audrey Miller is educated, young and beautiful, fit, and obsessed with the personal “brand” she has carefully cultivated, primarily through her Instagram account. She has become an influencer, receiving free merchandise and products in exchange for posting photographs and reviews. In her first-person narration, Audrey rejects her former roommate’s contention that she is a narcissist. Rather, she insists that she says so many details about her personal life because she loves the “connection. With a million friends at the palm of your hand, how could anyone ever feel truly alone?” She is a midwestern transplant to New York City who has “construct[ed] a minor cult of personality out of thin air.”
Everyone on the internet is a liar. Every last one of us. The difference is the magnitude of our lies. . . . Because what’s the harm in making our mediocre lives look and feel just a little less mediocre? But the internet can reveal just as much as it can obfuscate.
Audrey has landed her dream job in Washington, D.C. as a Social Media Manager with the Smithsonian. The timing is perfect because her roommate, Izzy, informs her that she must move out of their shared apartment so that Izzy’s boyfriend can move in. Audrey rents an apartment in D.C. without viewing it in person, which proves to be a huge misstep.
Audrey’s friend, Cat, is an ambitious attorney in D.C., Audrey became the best friend she ever had after Audrey befriended her in college, rescuing her from the mean girls who ridiculed and rejected her. They lived together until Audrey moved to New York and Cat continued on to law school. Now Cat is a workaholic striving for partnership who spends precious little time in the tastefully decorated apartment into which she invites Audrey. Cat’s story is also related via a first-person narration. She is self-deprecating, describing her awkwardness and lack of self-confidence, as well as her relationship with Audrey. In her own way, she is as self-obsessed as Audrey. She observes, “I’ve often thought of myself as something of a Frankenstein’s monster. My individual pieces might be fine on their own — my thick hair, my long legs — but the overall effect is off-putting. I should be pretty, but I’m not.”
Cat gradually reveals details about a disturbing event in her past that she does not want Audrey or anyone else to discover. She may not be able to keep her past a secret, however, when Max Metcalf, an old friend from summer camp, surfaces. And, of course, he is interested only in Audrey. Is he toying with Cat, ready to reveal what he knows about that summer so long ago? Can she risk that he will tell Audrey if she doesn’t capitulate to his requests, including that she set him up with Audrey? “em>Could I trust him? I had only known him that one summer, and we’d spent only minimal time together. I remembered him as being willing to talk to the likes of me even though not an outcast himself.”
The chapters devoted to Audrey and Cat alternate with a disturbing chronicle from “him” about his fixation on Audrey. Barber cleverly reveals the depth of a mystery man’s obsession with Audrey — and determination to be with her in an all-consuming relationship — incrementally, while credibly establishing several potential perpetrators. He explains how he discovered Audrey online and “followed her wherever I could,” reading all of her blog entries, looking at all of her posts and images, reviewing all of the comments she posted. She revealed the music she listened to, the shows she was watching, the books she read, and posed in one photograph “partially turned away from the camera, her body angled toward the ocean behind her, her eyes looking straight through the screen into mine. One hand restrained her flowing hair, the other was extended to the camera, beckoning, as if to say, Follow me.” Connor is the associate at Cat’s firm with whom she is infatuated, but he has always seen Cat as “a classmate, colleague, and trivia buddy,” but never as a romantic partner. Nick is Audrey’s old boyfriend and when she arrives in D.C., they pick up right where they left off in a casual, uncommitted, yet reliably affectionate and friendly relationship. But Audrey finds herself attracted to Max, the thoughtful too-good-to-be-true guy with whom she races into a relationship. She is being terrorized in her apartment by someone lurking in the alley, leaving thorn-studded flower stems on her doorstep, and entering her apartment when she is asleep. Could it be the landlady’s grandson, Ryan? After all, Audrey caught him in her apartment stealing from her. There’s even a visitor at the Smithsonian who persists in lurking around the as-yet-unfinished exhibit that Audrey is tasked with promoting online.
As Audrey is tormented by her unidentified stalker and Cat becomes increasingly paranoid about her secret, Barber deftly accelerates both the dramatic tension and the book’s pace. She continues revealing clues about the man who is diabolically infatuated with Audrey, eliminating suspects until only a couple remain. And then delivers shocking plot development s that send both Audrey and Cat reeling, taking readers on a breathtaking race to the story’s jaw-dropping conclusion.
Barber proves that her initial success with Are You Sleeping was no fluke. Follow Me is a first-rate, compulsively readable thriller populated with intriguing characters and founded upon a scarily plausible plot set against the backdrop of a timely and thought-provoking issue: social media and the extent to which many people share details about their personal lives with complete strangers. Follow Me succeeds at being the cautionary story Barber envisioned and, for that reason, would make an excellent book club selection because there are numerous aspects of the story that lend themselves to contemplation and discussion.
Excerpt from Follow Me
Chapter One: Audrey
What doesn’t kill you makes you more interesting. At least, that’s always been my personal motto, and it was echoing through my mind as I tried to stave off a panic attack on a southbound train to Washington, DC. In this instance, though, it wasn’t helping—largely because I wasn’t sure that the logic held. What if this move actually made me less interesting?
I shuddered and once again considered petting the emotional support Chihuahua currently occupying a quarter of my seat. When I’d extended a hand to scratch behind his ears earlier, his owner—a ferocious woman with a French-tip manicure and wearing a lemon-yellow velour tracksuit—had practically screamed, “He’s working!” The little dog looked to me like he was snoozing, but I was in no hurry to set his owner off again.
Instead, I fished a Xanax from my purse and took another surreptitious photo of the dog. I added “Hour 2” in purple text and a GIF of a small, yapping dog before uploading it to my Instagram Story. Almost immediately, comments from my million-plus followers appeared:
Safe travels!
That dog looks like he has it in for you! Image
Hang in there, Audrey!
The tension that had ratcheted my shoulders up by my ears began to melt, and I finally relaxed into my seat. Comments from my followers were hands down my favorite part of living my life on the internet. My former roommate (and former best friend) Izzy used to say that was because I was a narcissist, but Izzy was the one who couldn’t pass a reflective surface without checking herself out, so, you know, glass houses and all that. Anyway, it wasn’t a love of myself that kept me sharing my world with my followers—it was my love of connection. With a million friends at your fingertips, how could anyone ever feel truly alone?
I started responding to comments about my clothing, nail color, and music in my headphones, but not the one query that kept reappearing: Why are you leaving New York?
Good fucking question.
It was the question that was raising my cortisol levels, the one that had me chewing benzos. I mean, I loved New York. It was the most vibrant city in the world, the most exciting and unquestionably best place to live. For almost as long as I could remember, I’d dreamed about living there. I’d even collaged my childhood bedroom walls with images of the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and dozens of other landmarks.
But now, seven years after I thought I’d found my home, I was speeding away from it on the Amtrak while my belongings simultaneously made their way south on a moving truck. I used to imagine that if I ever left New York, it would be for someplace almost as glamorous: Paris, London, Tokyo.
Washington, DC, had never made that list.
I fingered another Xanax and wondered whether I was making an enormous mistake.
You’re doing the right thing, I told myself. How could taking your dream job be anything other than the right move?
Because the truth was that I had aspired to work in a museum even longer than I had wanted to live in New York. I’d graduated from college with a degree in art history and planned to take a year to work in galleries in New York before applying to graduate school for a museum studies degree—but one year turned into two, and then I kept finding reasons not to apply. I put it off even as I watched the plum museum jobs I coveted all go to candidates with master’s degrees, and so I was stuck working part-time in a couple of privately owned art galleries and volunteering at museums like MoMA and the Whitney.
Last month, though, I had been browsing the job boards and spotted the advertisement for the Hirshhorn Museum’s Social Media Manager position. I could do that, I thought as I read the description. I could totally do that. I excelled at social media. Seriously, how else did a random midwestern transplant construct a minor cult of personality out of thin air? I submitted an application before I could second-guess myself.
When Ayala Martin-Nesbitt, Director of Public Engagement, called to offer me the job, I had momentary cold feet. I’d fallen in love with the world-class museum—part of the Smithsonian system—during my interview, but I’d been less taken with the location. How could I move away from New York? Ayala gave me a day to think it over, and I’d decided to celebrate the offer and talk it out with Izzy. Izzy had been my best friend since grade school and had talked me through decisions ranging from whether to cut bangs to how to confront a former boss who made inappropriate jokes. She’d always steered me straight; I knew she wouldn’t let me down.
But when I’d flung open the door of our East Village apartment, clutching a bottle of Prosecco and bursting with enthusiasm, I found Izzy sitting stiffly on the couch.
Frowning, I set down the bubbles and asked, “What’s up?”
Izzy lifted a few strands of her long, dark hair and examined them for split ends. To her hair, she said, “Russell’s lease is up at the end of the month.”
“Oh, bummer,” I said, hoping this meant that Izzy’s terrible boyfriend and his annoyingly trendy beard would be leaving the city.
“Yeah, well.” She dropped her hair and finally met my eyes. “He’s moving in.”
“What?” I gaped at her. “No way, Iz. You can’t just announce that your boyfriend and his collection of fake Gucci sneakers are moving in.”
Her hazel eyes darkened and she pursed her mouth. “Actually, I can. My name is the only one on the lease, because you were too busy working below-minimum-wage jobs and chasing Instagram fame to qualify as a renter. This is my apartment, and I decide who lives here.”
Her words hit me like a fist in the chest. Over the course of our decades-long friendship, Izzy and I had fought infrequently, and never about money. I had no idea she was harboring resentment for covering a few rent payments years ago. I’d long ago paid her back, and it wasn’t like I didn’t fork out my share these days. Besides, she never objected to accepting the sheet masks, adaptogens, and slow fashion items I got from brands courting me to promote them on Instagram.
“Whatever,” I sniffed, picking up the Prosecco. “I’m moving to DC anyway.”
Izzy blinked, surprised. “You got the job?”
“Yep,” I said, unwrapping the foil around the bottle’s top.
Not too long ago, Izzy would have demanded to know all the details, would not have relented until she’d heard my conversation with Ayala recounted in excruciating detail. She would have stayed up all night with me, discussing the pros and cons of taking the job, thoughtfully helping me reach the right decision. Now, she merely nodded.
“Oh. Well. I guess this will all work out then.”
“Yeah,” I snarled, popping the cork and taking a swig. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
And it would be. Better things awaited me in DC. That much was finally clear.
Excerpted from Follow Me by Kathleen Barber. Copyright © 2020 by Kathleen Barber. Excerpted by permission of Gallery, Pocket Books. All rights reserved.
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