People Like Her

Recently, I fell into a mom influencer hole. (For book research! But also because I became obsessed!) These beautiful women with their well-behaved children were obviously presenting their lives as more perfect than they actually were, I decided. Then People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd came along to thrillingly upend my assumptions, through the twisty story of a mother who makes herself more of a mess to rake in the followers and the chilling consequences that follow. Imagine Gone Girl with a Momstagram account.

The husband and wife team behind the author’s pseudonym has fittingly written from the dueling perspectives of a married couple, Emmy and Dan Jackson. As Emmy’s mom account @the_mamabare grows more popular and less truthful, the cracks in their marriage deepen. Both protagonists are fascinating, but they’re not alone. We also get a third, unnamed narrator, who follows Emmy’s blog not for the #parentingtips, but because she wants revenge. The why and the how will shock you.

Smart, propulsive, and biting, People Like Her is a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting millions of strangers into your life. But it’s also about family, love, and how deeply we long for others to see us. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to this novel about social media addiction is that, while reading it, I wasn’t once tempted to reach for my phone.

To her adoring fans, Emmy Jackson, aka @the_mamabare, is the honest “Instamum” who always tells it like it is.

To her skeptical husband, a washed-up novelist who knows just how creative Emmy can be with the truth, she is a breadwinning powerhouse chillingly brilliant at monetizing the intimate details of their family life.

To one of Emmy’s dangerously obsessive followers, she’s the woman that has everything—but deserves none of it.

As Emmy’s marriage begins to crack under the strain of her growing success and her moral compass veers wildly off course, the more vulnerable she becomes to a very real danger circling ever closer to her family.