17-year-old Almond Brown has no friends, but 3.5 million followers. Ever since she was an Instagrammable bump her life has been documented and shared by her vlogging influencer mum.
Every post is perfectly curated by a team and a demanding manager, in pursuit of brand deals and Almond feels that everything people see of her has to be perfect, even when her real life is disintegrating. She really struggles with anxiety and mental health and now her mum has signed her up for group therapy. Here she finds two friends, but the dark side of the internet has her in its clutches and cyberbullying and trolling leads to some questionable decisions on her part.
Exploring themes of unrealistic life expectations, discrimination, mental health pressures and how social media can manipulate reality, in a wholly engaging and authentic story with fully rounded characters that you really care about, this is far from a mere issue led novel. It is one that older teens will really engage with and yet it has important eye-opening warning messages for those that might flirt with internet popularity as a lifestyle choice. Highly recommended.
Almond Brown has no friends in real life . . . but 3.5 million followers online. A heart-felt, whip-smart deep dive into what it would really be like to be internet famous at 17: a cautionary tale for our time from a writer who has grown up with social media. Almond is forced into the spotlight when she was just a perfectly filtered bump: her mum has been documenting their family through social media since before she was born. And her family enjoy all the rewards that come from that level of influence. Only, it's not the life Almond would have chosen for herself, and being on a platform all the time has made her anxious and insecure. When the darkest side of the internet begins to haunt her, Almond feels like she's going to lose everything . . . If only she could see that she has a real-life, too, full of friends and family who love her, and that it could save her.
