over the influence

Whitney Golden is an influencer, a mom of 4 who shares her life online, blogging and sharing photos on Instagram and writing about the struggles of being a single mother. She had started writing when her husband died suddenly, and she was able to find others who were interested in her story. She grew her audience, and became a full-time influencer, able to afford a big new house and an assistant as well as her manager.

Her daughter Mia did not enjoy it as much. She didn’t pay all that much attention to what her mother posted until she was supposed to be part of a family photo shoot and didn’t want to. Kids at school started teasing her about the things her mother was posting online about her, so Mia finally looked up her mother online. She was stunned to see how many followers her mother had. And then she saw the picture. Her mother had posted photos of her father’s funeral, including one that showed Mia’s raw sorrow. Mia was furious, and she asked her mother to take down the pictures from the funeral immediately.

Whitney understood Mia being upset about it, but she didn’t think it was that big of a deal. All the other influencers share pictures of their family. And Whitney was just writing about her own experience. But the rift with Mia is stressing her out, so she’s looking forward to her monthly spa afternoon. It’s as she’s leaving the spa that she gets served.

Mia’s best friend’s father knows an attorney who he thought might be able to help Mia, so he introduced her. Mia told him that she wanted to sue her mother for emancipation. The attorney explains that she’s too young, and the court would expect her to be living on her own with her own money. But he does think that she has a case, and agrees to work on her behalf to sue Whitney to take down all her social media and to pay her back pay for all the times Mia had helped her with a sponsored photo shoot or post.

Whitney is completely blindsided by the lawsuit and isn’t sure what to do. She decides to fight the lawsuit, so she hires an attorney of her own. But the lawsuit and ensuing attention for it makes both Whitney and Mia vulnerable in unexpected ways. Whitney starts losing sponsors, and Mia finds herself under the kind of public scrutiny she’d been trying to avoid by getting her mother’s online presence taken down. And as the trial date gets closer, the more pressure they both feel to do what they they think is right.

But will that ultimately bring the family back together, or will the lawsuit rip them apart forever?

Hate Follow is a smart twist on the story of an influencer, asking important questions about privacy and how much is too much to share online. Told in alternating viewpoints between Whitney, Mia, and a group of internet trolls, this story explores the stories we tell online and how it can effect others, in positive and painful ways.

I was sucked into Hate Follow from the beginning, and I raced through it to see how just how the story wrapped up. I really liked Mia and wanted her to be okay through all this, and while I had less of a connection with Whitney, I couldn’t help but empathize with her situation and be impressed at how hard she worked to keep her family together. This is a really beautiful book that brings up things we need to be thinking about, as we post our lives online. Anyone interested in the effects of influencer culture should check it out.

Egalleys for Hate Follow were provided by William Morrow through NetGalley, with many thanks.