Book Review: Do You Follow?

Mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators.

Mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators.

Mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators.

If we could tattoo that on the inside of thriller writers’ eyelids, that would be great.

Big old spoiler: the main character and her murderous evil twin are the same person thanks to Dissociative Identity Disorder!

That’s not how it works! That’s very not how it works!

I guessed that’s where the book was going pretty early on, and I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised, but no. It just leaned into demonizing mental illness.

The big twist at the end that the central murder victim had planned to commit suicide by protagonist to generate social media buzz was meant to be more surprising than it was, but even if Alexa/Beth hadn’t been responsible for his death, she had still murdered someone else while suffering from DID.

It doesn’t help that mental health resources are frequently mocked.

The setup is also pretty unrealistic. Alexa, who has no degree, gets hired by a social media marketing firm as a marketer, and gets paid enough to afford an apartment by herself in NYC in a neighborhood good enough that she goes walking around outside at night without a second thought, with enough money left over to buy vats of takeout. And on Day One at her job, she’s handed a client and basically given no supervision. This is portrayed as totally normal and not in any way a deus ex machina.

Aside from a few minor pacing issues due to clumsy time-skips, there wasn’t anything technically wrong with the book, and the audiobook narrator (Marnye Young) was a good fit.

I got the audiobook as an ARC from NetGalley and Greenleaf.

TWs for gun violence, animal cruelty, scars, and wounds.

If it had been a good twin/evil twin book, four stars.

As it is, 2/5 stars.

Get the audiobook here!

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