A Lazy and Uninspired Story About How Women are Dumb and Evil

Follow Me by Elizabeth Rose Quinn

Amazon First Reads March 2025

Pages: 271 Genre: thriller

Rating: 1.5 Stars

Kindle Highlights

Chiara is an overworked mother of twins who just wants other mom friends. When she is given the opportunity to go to a "mom-fluencer" weekend, she jumps at the chance to find community. But then she goes missing, leaving her twin sister Adrienne desperate for answers. Adrienne knows something is suspicious here, but no one seems to believe her. So, a year later, she takes it upon herself to infiltrate the retreat to find the answers she knows are out there somewhere.

Where to begin with this book. I wasn't sold from the very beginning, and it went downhill from there.

There are a lot of things you can critique about mom influencers on social media, especially right now in the rise of conservatism where things like trad wives are a huge deal. Regardless, there's so many people (primarily women) who exploit and shame their children for views with no regard for lasting consequences. And this book did critique those things. But it just felt like a misogynistic take down of misogyny. Instead of orienting around real issues, it sort of read more as "wow, look at how annoying and stupid these other women are!" Mom influencers don't exist in an evil vacuum.

I think this is best shown through the main group of moms known as the Mom Squad. There are four (plus one) women who are basic caricatures of various types of women influencers. And yes, one of them is a trad wife. These characters play a huge role in the story, but they are entirely one dimensional. They exist to be made fun of. There are valid points to be found in the writing of these characters, but it's entirely surface level. I can't tell if the book wanted to be reflective and nuanced or not, because a lot of Adrienne's (already very weak) character development hinged on her learning to understand the struggles of motherhood, yet the book was also seemingly mocking these nuances.

Honestly, was this book meant to be satire? I can't tell. Unfortunately, if it was, it misses the mark. It fell somewhere between satire and real life that just feels weird. People don't act like this.

The plot itself didn't make much sense regardless. After finishing the book, I'm still confused about why any of this happened in the first place. Nothing that happens to Chiara is justified within the narrative, and the explanations they try to give are completely ridiculous. It was theatrics for the sake of creating a thriller book.

This becomes abundantly clear when you realize that Adrienne — the main character in the self-imposed investigator role — does exactly nothing. She was so mean and judgmental of everyone that she met, and I struggled to find any redeeming characteristics for her. It was also very confusing because the idea to go investigate this influencer retreat was her idea. She decided to spend thousands of dollars to go infiltrate this highly-specific microculture, and then she spends the whole time whining about being there. She has no plan outside of being rude and clueless. For a thriller main character, she's way too passive. Especially since she choses to take on an investigative role.

And the ending was bizarre. I do not want spoil it, but ... oh my God. The style and tone has a time and a place (consider something like the Scream movies), but it felt wildly out of place in this book. Ultimately, all it did was undercut any intended messages in the first part of the book and highlight all the poor writing choices made throughout. If you want to be a satirical thriller focusing on out-of-touch influencers and their parasocial fans, great! Or if you want to genuinely explore the cult-like mentalities involved in influencer-fan relationships, especially those preying on emotionally-vulnerable populations, also great! But this book wanted to be a mix of both, and it just didn't work for me.

Apparently everyone else loves this book (it's being made into a movie??), so maybe I just didn't get it. I thought it was a lazy and under-developed story that took too much inspiration from media it fails to fully understand.