While I did, overall, like this book...I was very frustrated that they didn't follow the conspiracy theory aspect more closely. It seemed a fascinating plot, I mean what would you do if you found out your boyfriend's private life on the web? I do think this is going to be a hit as the subject matter is so current.

...The challenge... is how to write about wasteful self-consciousness without the effort itself becoming wasteful? This is a needle every novelist has to thread. And again, the warning issued by Roth over half a century ago was not just about the threat contemporary reality posed to the imagination, but the extent to which the imagination would have to work in order to adapt and emulate that reality. Fake Accounts ultimately delivers on its themes, but it does so with bloated devotion, the result being that the novel often suffers from the very afflictions it attempts to diagram.

https://vol1brooklyn.com/2021/02/08/wasted-awareness-a-review-of-lauren-oylers-fake-accounts/

Unfortunately, this was simply not for me. The lack of dialogue, the steam-of-consciousness style writing and the feeling of "get to the point already!" Forced me to DNF this book at 26%. Particularly unfortunate since I recommended it to my book club for our monthly read.

Lauren Oyler is a rising star in the literary world, and I can't wait to see how her career grows in the coming years. Her prose is clear, and her observations on internet culture and millennial ennui are cutting and precise. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a smart (if not escapist) read.

This book was completely fascinating and its writing for sure lives up to that striking cover.

It's 2016, specifically the day before Donald Trump is to be inaugurated, and our narrator has discovered that her boyfriend, Felix is a closet conspiracy theorist complete with his own super popular Instagram account. (PS. I checked and there is an account with the same name, but there aren't any posts, so I'm a bit disappointed at the publisher now for not being extra with their marketing.) Luckily, she was thinking about breaking up with him anyway, so this works out perfectly. Then here comes the twists, y'all.

Definitely loving this book title especially since my Insta was recently taken down by... fake accounts. Ba dum chhhh. 🥁

I'm such a fan of the vaguely unlikeable female protagonist these days. Our narrator is giving me some A Year of Rest and Relaxation's annoying vibes with a smidge of Milk Fed's neurosis thrown in there. Females do not have to be likeable and that includes 👏🏼 in 👏🏼 books 👏🏼 too.👏🏼

Loving the unique way this is written as a big old stream of consciousness. I felt like I was taken on such a mental ride, especially when she breaks the 4th wall (3rd wall? How many walls even are there?) and addresses the reader. There's also a group of ex-boyfriends that functions as a Greek chorus of sorts that makes for fun asides.

I want to talk about the themes in this book for days, but IG has a caption limit. Our narrator hates that her BF has lied and has a fake account. Yet, she so thoroughly curates her life online and bases her self-worth on engagement, that you also see that this is a form of fakeness too. Even when she goes to the Women's March in D.C., it's mainly to amass online content, not to really make a difference. What makes something real?

No spoilers here, my friends. But THAT ENDING though! 😱

Thanks to @netgalley for the opportunity to review this gem!

I struggled with Fake Accounts, mostly because I really wanted to like it and I just didn't. I'm really interested in novels that are About The Internet, so I kept reading even though this didn't really hold my attention, thinking at some point things would click into place--but that never happened. I found it really unsatisfying, frankly, and the ending left me more frustrated than anything I have read in recent memory. Overall, a big disappointment for me.

This book sounded interesting but I was so wrong. It is a slog and not the smart critique of millennials on the interregnum j was expecting but rather an anti-climactic stream of consciousness that falls really flat. Unfortunately I couldn’t even bring myself to finish it. It seems reviews for Fake Accounts are pretty split - either folks loving it or hating it - and I fell into the latter camp. I still appreciate the opportunity to read this eARC from Catapult and Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion, and am sorry it’s not a more positive one.

"We don't want to die, but we also don't want to do anything challenging, such as what living requires." This quote from "Fake Accounts" by Lauren Oyler perfectly sums up the life of unnamed narrator. After finding out that her boyfriend has a secret Instagram account where he posts outrageous conspiracy theories, she begins to "follow his lead" so to speak and cultivate fake personas of her own, finding it much easier to pretend to be other people than to deal with her own shortcomings and life challenges.

I really wanted to love this book, but it fell short for me. I was intrigued by the plot summary, but it didn't take long for me to discover that the actual book didn't really have much of a plot at all. While, as someone who is active on social media, some of the issues raised by the author resonated with me, I found the book a bit of a chore to get through. I didn't really enjoy the stream of consciousness writing style and was often bored with the long passages about the narrator's foray into online dating. None of the characters were likable and the narrator was downright narcissistic (though she seemed to be completely unaware of this). The twist at the end made me glad that I struggled through it, but it wasn't enough to redeem this book for me.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

If you like a rambling story, this is for you. Given the description, I was surprised that most of the book wasn't plot driven, but I liked it just the same. The writing is well-done and the narrator kept me interested.

A shockingly dull exploration of the parched inner life and raw thought processes of an extremely-online and suffocatingly self-absorbed millennial, who embodies nearly every single cliche about Brooklyn and Berlin hipsters. Despite the occasional Tweet-length bonbons of witty sociological insights, our first-person protagonist's inner life isn't as complex or fascinating as she (or our author) thinks it is. Might have worked better as a long short story about pathological lying and self-dramatization on both the Internet and IRL, and the howling madness of the first month of the Trump Administration, but not at 272 pages.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Catapult for sharing an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.</i>

I tried to like this book. And I gave it several chances. But life's too short so it's a DNF.

I'm giving up after 40 percent.

The book's premise interested me (as did the blurb from author Zadie Smith), but the author's lack of periods did not.

I could go on, but don't want to be a hater.

Special thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced ebook in exchange for my honest feedback.

Did you really, really like Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show turned BBC Three + Amazon series?

Do you miss the show’s irreverent, wry, hilarious commentary on feminism, dating, sex, and a desire for attention?

Read Fake Accounts.

If you haven’t seen Fleabag, not to worry! More extensive review to follow!

The premise for Fake Accounts is this:

The narrator finds out that her long-term boyfriend, who claims to not use social media, runs an anonymous conspiracy theory account on Instagram with over 10,000 followers. While this is the book’s launching off point, this conflict isn’t what the book is about. Rather, it’s about a woman exploring her relationships with the internet, people, and the world around her… With deception—both of self and others—along the way.

Oyler built her reputation as a book critic. In Fake Accounts, Oyler takes the critical lens that she has applied to specific books and applies it to millennials, social media, dating apps, books (more generally), podcasts, and being a 20-something, creative, liberal, white woman who lives in Brooklyn. The book begins just after the 2016 election.

As I read the ebook, I highlighted… a lot. In fact, I started making notes on top of the highlights (“hahaha,” “!!!!”) because I highlighted so much that the highlights had become less useful. I laughed often—a full-voiced laugh, the kind that usually doesn’t happen when reading quietly to oneself.

I highly recommend this book, particularly as a buddy read so that you have someone to discuss it with (and you’ll want to discuss it).

Meta, hilarious, and smart as hell, Fake Accounts is a refreshing read that cleverly unpacks internet culture and its inherent effects on present reality. This book radiates big brain energy in the best possible way, challenging the reader through its incisive social commentary rooted in a dissection of performance and facades.

The unnamed narrator secretly discovers that her boyfriend is a popular online right-wing conspiracy theorist, sparking an endlessly surprising fallout. Moving between New York and Berlin, the narrator sets off on a journey of apparent self-discovery yet quickly falls into the trappings of self-delusion, manifesting hilariously in a spree of dates using false personas according to archetypal astrological traits. While touted as a novel, and explicitly organized as such, it barely feels like one. It carries an unputdownable nature with its twisty plot yet is often operating in an almost essayistic manner throughout, with Oyler’s sharp criticism always on full display. For example, we get a takedown and parody of the trendy use of fragmentary structure in contemporary fiction. The narrator breaks the fourth wall and considers the manner in which her story is being told. She attends the Women’s March following Trump’s inauguration and questions performative activism. To top it all off, there is a chorus of ex-boyfriends that chimes in throughout. Finally, the ending is perfect, to put it simply (!!!).

This is a brilliant debut and I expect it to be one of the best books I read (and reread) this year. I cannot recommend it enough!

A really enjoyable and funny book that occasionally brushes up against profundity. I look forward to what Oyler does next.

Sadly I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought, though the author is clearly a virtuosic writer.

Favorite quotes:

"We don't want to die, but we also don't want to do anything challenging, such as what living requires."

"Later that day my phone lit up with congratulations from my coworkers, who had presumably been alerted. They hated working there, too, though most of them maintained they felt ultimately 'lucky' to have writing jobs in media, even stupid ones, when so many were evaporating into the industry-wide pivot to video."

"The light turned everything an eerie slate, no matter the time of day, like it had always just rained, or you had just cried. Once my sense of time and space returned to me, the atmosphere no longer produced a sense of pleasant absence but of being a small and insignificant part of an endless sorrow."

Sigh. I suspect I'm the odd one out on this novel which is more a commentary on social media than anything else. Don't get me wrong-Olyer will no doubt speak to many, just not me. The unnamed narrator is unmoored by her discovery that her boyfriend is a conspiracy theorist who spouts off on Instagram among other platforms and then moves to Berlin. There's lists, there's internal conversations, there's all sorts of things but it didn't pull together for me. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Fans of literary fiction might want to give this a try.

Unfortunately, this book read so dryly that I was already skimming through it by the time I got to the 6% mark. The premise is so cool, so thrilling, but the execution, at least at the start, was enough to make me want to put it down. The narrator was uninteresting and even the descriptions of the her boyfriend's conspiracy theories seemed a bit benign. I wasn't a big fan of FAKE ACCOUNT's execution, but I adore the premise.

This book was an impressive feat, wallowing in and savaging millennial malaise at the same time. It made me feel bad about myself, reading certain tendencies to filth in an incisive way. I could've highlighted most of the book.

Disclaimer: DNF at 16%. I ended up quitting on this book, despite having been very excited for it. I was having a hard time with both the main protagonist and the writing style. The main protagonist was completely underwhelming and lacked any emotion. All of these things were happening and she was immediately disconnected in a way I found unbelievable and annoying, frankly. In terms of the writing, it read very much like “first this happened and then this happened and then this happened.” Really lacked on any detail, any atmosphere, and was a whole lot of tell instead of show. Definitely not a terrible book, but I made the decision it wasn’t worth my time, unfortunately. Thank you for the advanced copy.

Fake Accounts is a demonstration in all things social media: colloquial, entertaining, and addictive. The narrator herself appears hyperaware to the concept of being perceived both in online and real life, testing the familiarity of what it means to get to know someone, even if it turns out they're an online conspiracy theorist. Diving into the digital is still not entirely Fake Account's intent, as it remains human without trying to moralize a space like the internet, emphasizing its default configuration being an infinite, impartial, doom-scroll of study, and I couldn't put it down.