You Will Never Be Me
Finished: April 2024
Book Source: NetGalley
Book Publication Date: August 2024
When cracks start forming in an influencer’s curated life, she finds out that jealousy is just as viral as a video in this riveting suspense novel by bestselling author Jesse Q. Sutanto.
Influencer Meredith Lee didn’t teach Aspen Palmer how to blossom on social media just to be ditched as soon as Aspen became big. So can anyone really blame Mer for doing a little stalking? Nothing serious, more like Stalking Lite.
Then Mer gets lucky; she finds one of Aspen’s kids’ iPads and swipes it. Now she has access to the family calendar and Aspen’s social media accounts. Would anyone else be able to resist tweaking things a little here and there, showing up in Aspen’s place for meetings with potential sponsors? Mer’s only taking back what she deserves—what should have been hers.
Meanwhile, Aspen doesn’t understand why her perfectly filtered life is falling apart. Sponsors are dropping her, fellow influencers are ghosting her, and even her own husband seems to find her repulsive. If she doesn’t find out who’s behind everything, she might just lose it all. But what everyone seems to forget is that Aspen didn’t become one of TikTok’s biggest momfluencers by being naive.
When Meredith suddenly goes missing, Aspen’s world is upended and mysterious threats begin to arrive—but she won’t let anything get in the way of her perfect life again.
Trigger Warnings:
Murder, stalking, adultery
Characters
- Meredith – a semi popular influencer
- Aspen – all day Aspen, Meredith’s ex best friend that is a bigger influence than her now
- Noemie and Elea – Aspen’s twin daughters, Noemie has diabetes
- Sabine – Aspen’s baby daughter
- Luca – Mer’s 8 month old son
- Clara – Meredith’s sister
- Ben – Aspen’s husband, realtor
- Liv – Aspen’s personal assistant that also wants to be an influencer, she also has a young baby
My Review
A twisty, physiological triller in the world of social media influencers, this felt like a different universe than the one I’m living in! With dual perspectives, the novel follows two young women navigating the highs and lows of social media stardom. The characters live in a world where every moment is an opportunity for content creation and the pursuit of likes and followers is relentless.
For those of us juggling young kids, it’s eye-opening to witness how some people exploit their children for attention. The characters inhabit a world where every parenting moment is meticulously curated for likes and shares, blurring the line between genuine affection and calculated performance.
The pacing isn’t always perfect. In the middle of the book one of the main characters, Mer, goes missing. A little reveal had me wondering if I would even finish reading the book… but oof! So glad that I did! The real magic of the book comes in the latter half. The twist is fabulously even more OOF!
This was a wild ride worth taking. Sure, the characters might be hard to relate to sometimes, and the pacing might stumble, but the payoff is well worth it. If you’re into psychological thrillers with a healthy dose of mystery and cattiness, this one’s for you.
Spoilers/Summary
SPOILERS BELOW. Stop here if you do not want to read spoilers.
Meredith goes to Aspens house after they’ve had a huge fight and sneaks in the backyard. She finds her daughters iPad there and steals it. She logs into her accounts and steals her ideas for content and also changes appointments around to make sure that aspen misses them. Then she swoops in and collaborates with the person so her following grows.
Aspen texts Mer saying she needs a girls night. Goes, drugs and kills her. She drives her body into a pond. Aspen knew that Mer had her iPad and was doing the things she had been doing. She gave her a chance to apologize and when she didn’t she decided to kill her.
Liv, her PA, had slashed her tires at a party to her aspen to pay attention to her. They become friends until aspen catches her making out with Ben. Liv blackmails her into posting content with aspen to gain her followers since she now knows too much about Aspen. Aspen agrees.
Mers body is found. Mer and Aspens fight is revealed from another influencer. She also shows a video of Aspen faking her content. Aspen actually gains popularity with this and shows how hard it is to be a momfluencer. Things are going well until a couple sees Ben and Mers photos and they say they were at the open house when the two of them were there… this raises suspicions of jealousy.
Aspen becomes a suspect. Ben says he knows she wasn’t home the night she was supposedly sleeping in Sabines room. Aspen decides to pin it on Ben. Ben pushes her after they argue about the night that she murdered Mer. Aspen had removed all the beer from the house and instigated a big fight and said she would sleep in sabines room. Ben is seen leaving the house to go get beer the night Mer is murdered. Aspen goes out the back. She hides the burner phone in his car, she also had been sending herself messages from Ben’s Google hangouts for a while that were hateful and mean that ended up coming in handy. Ben goes to jail and aspens followers increases even more.