The story of nothing is as it seems online, that celebrity you idolise - are they really what they say they are? Idol isn’t quite as harrowing, although it does very much touch on issues of consent and rape it is less graphic, and instead focuses the story from the point of view of the accused. The only things that stay murky are the parts about the MC's trauma and mental illness, which obviously really took from her character development.

This has, for some reason, messed with my head so much that I literally have flashbacks to scenes from this book and it's genuinely causing me distress. And her career is booming: she’s just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists and she’s appearing at sell-out events. It took inspiration from the real life Steubenville rape case but set the story in Ireland, and told from the perspective of the victim who struggles to label what happened to her as rape, and internalises the shame and blame. Her second novel for adults, After the Silence, was published in 2020 and was an instant bestseller in Ireland.Samantha Miller is the definition of a 'toxic' person and each of her actions documented in this story are completely self-serving with no regard to anyone else's feelings. And her career is booming: she's just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists and she's appearing at sell-out events. I didn't want to be part of this spiral into utter and absolute desolation and chaos, I really didn't want to be. Then I read Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind Of Girl and it described a situation with her sister which caused a divisive reaction. I also enjoy some contemporary fiction, literary fiction and romance with a smattering of non-fiction.

The commentary on the cult of the influencer guru could have been interesting if it was handled better. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. She has dealt with her own struggles and has reformed herself as this person that young women look up to and aspire to. There's an interesting yin yang in my feelings about Idol - written by an author who in her previous novels, especially Asking For It, has always challenged my world views and had me thinking long into the night about the narrative she has presented. We have a lot of conversations about cancel culture: whether it exists, whether it has gone too far, whether it only works on marginalized people.As a social media storm erupts, things deteriorate as Sam tries to reconnect with Lisa and Josh to confirm her truth.

Who is who they purport to be and who has changed their narrative to become something they weren’t previously? I had no empathy for any one person, which was unexpected as I thought I’d be rooting for either Lisa or Samantha.There is Sam the attention seeker, the messed up, Sam the obsessive, the deluded, the needy and the character who gets what she wants any which way she can. I think this is what makes Idol work so well for me: O’Neill spends time exploring the different angles of what it means to be a flawed social media influencer, encompassing the perspectives of Sam herself, her manager, this antagonist, Lisa, her mother, etc. Well, I dare say if you plonk yourself at the top of a brand success pedestal at some point you’ll fall off. While I appreciated the critique, at times it felt like there was almost too much going on with a multitude of themes being raised at the same time without having the time or the space to delve deep into any single one.