Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Idol

Idol by Louise O'Neill 🤳 ad/ gifted products featured
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🤳 The plot: Samantha Miller isn't just an influencer - she's a guru, a spiritual guide for her millions of followers, her "girls". It's no surprise to her when an article she writes about a sexual experience she had with her best friend Lisa in high school goes viral, but when Lisa contacts her for the first time in years, it shocks her to learn that she doesn't remember that night the same way Sam does. In fact, Lisa's allegations have the power to turn Sam's career and even her memories upside down...

This book took me on a JOURNEY, and I was hooked the whole way through. From the start, Sam is a magnetic character, the shiny veneer of her success as mesmerising as it is suspicious. Sure enough, each page peels back another layer of her hypocrisy, and you soon realise how deeply she is lying to herself as much as to her followers.

Central to the book is Sam's obsession with what "kind" of person she is. It blinds her to what her actions make and have made her: she is a Good Person now, she believes, so she cannot have done a Bad Thing then; she is a victim of sexual violence herself, so she cannot also be a perpetrator. She asks people, frequently throughout the book, "Do you really believe I could do something like this?" Goodness is an essential state of being to Sam, a badge she wears; to preserve her sense of self, she has to reverse-engineer her past to fit it, no matter who gets in her way.

Idol is empathic storytelling at its very best, because it shows that trying to understand why abusers do what they do is not the same thing as excusing it. Sam's actions are more monstrous the more we understand them, and the result is a brilliantly nuanced portrait of assault and trauma. It's also, I think, a very sharp illustration of the broken logic of online influence, the central lie that a complex human being could ever be as consistent as a brand.

Thank you SO much @izz.reading and @penguinukbooks for sending this my way, this is one of my favourite reads so far this year! #ThisIsIdol

🤳 Read it if you love a good villain, nuanced writing about consent and trauma, and a takedown of influencer culture.

🚫 Avoid it if you are sensitive to discussions of rape and sexual assault, eating disorders, and honestly just really abusive characters. Sam is seriously awful and if you're recovering from an abusive situation I think this might be hard to read.

Content Warnings

kellyung's review

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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