When I read Yesteryear I saw recommendations for this, which is similar but apparently better. So I got it and read it on Kindle. I was reading it when I went to Brighton in August which is where I took this photo - the pink item is my bag and the blue item at the bottom is my dress, and I swear the creamy colour to the right hand side is actually the white sheets in the lighting in the room, not my flesh! I didn't notice what this photo looked like until I've uploaded it just now...
Anyway! On to the plot. I haven't written here in ages and it's weeks since I read this book so I am trying to remind myself about what happened in it. I really need to get caught up on my book blogging because I don't want to miss out any of the books I've read! Please bear with me.
The first character is Lizzie. She's a magazine writer whose job is in jeopardy because of the death of magazines and so on. She's married and she has two young children. She spends quite a lot of time scrolling through the instagram of her old friend Bex, who is now a tradwife influencer. It's a love/hate kind of thing and Lizzie can't tear herself away. Then she gets a message from Bex, now known as Rebecca, suggesting that she break some news about Rebecca's life in her magazine. It will be a huge story and Rebecca wants her to be the one to break the news. She suggests that she and Lizzie meet up at a blogging conference and she will give Lizzie the exclusive interview.
The conference is very clearly meant to be Blog Her, which is probably defunct now and which really made me laugh. It's full of influencers and corporate giveaways. It's held at a luxury hotel and Lizzie enjoys her first couple of days there. She barely sees Rebecca, but enjoys herself anyway. Rebecca comes to her room one night and they drink together, Rebecca letting her tradwife side slip.
Then the next morning, in the middle of the keynote speech or whatever, news comes that Rebecca's husband Gray has been found murdered on their ranch. She is taken for questioning and so is Lizzie.
Rebecca's life turns out to not be as rosy as it looks online. She is married to Gray, and has moulded him into the man she would like him to be - a bit like Natalie in Yesteryear. They have five children. Rebecca is working hard at her job of making everything look perfect - but clearly not everything is.
I did find the book really compelling and I liked Lizzie's point of view and thought it was so true how she couldn't look away from Rebecca's life. But it just fell a bit flat for me. I'm giving it three and a half out of five because I do think it's worth reading, and I do think it's better than Yesteryear, but it just wasn't quite there yet.
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