Thank you Netgalley for the advanced copy.

I liked the premise of the book, but I felt it was poorly executed. The main character is cheating on her long term boyfriend, who by all accounts is a good person. Their relationship lacks any passion. Instead of working through their problem, she decides to sleep with a married man. This man is the king of red flags. He has no redeeming qualities. This man tells her he is sleeping with other women in addition to staying in his marriage. The main character stalks one of these women on Instagram and criticizes everything about her. The women she was stalking came from a privileged background. It seemed like the privileged influencer had her life together and was not letting this guy walk all over her. I was hoping the main character would befriend the woman in real life and ditch the loser.

This book was overall very stiff to read and didn’t have much personality. I was a bit mislead by the description and wasn’t a fan of the book overall

I don't even know why I requested this book, it isn't the usual kind of book I read. But what a runaway train it turned out to be. It was so dark and compelling and it seemed so honest that I read it right through.

n the last few years, I have seen an influx of books that are willing to tell stories that are brave enough to forgo niceties, cast unlikable characters, and mine the depths of messy and disturbing lives. This is one such book.

Our narrator is an unnamed woman in thrall to a toxic older lover and obsessed with the other woman snatching his attention away. So much so that she has turned herself into a stalker, poring over and frantically refreshing the woman’s Instagram feeds, and even following her when she leaves her house. The narrative itself is vitriolic, tortuous, fractured and a perfect fit for the story it sets out to tell.

Our narrator starts off thinking she is up for this affair; he is cheating on his wife and she on her boyfriend, so they have a sort of equilibrium in their entanglements. But with every passing page she becomes plagued by the fact that he has a whole other storyline unfolding and she is merely a subplot, a brief aside.

While the author offers up plenty of social critique and insight, she brilliantly balances it with relationship drama and cutting humour. The chapter titles alone are the work of a genius.

Maybe not to everyone’s taste, but a welcome change of pace from the books that usually fill up summer reading lists.

A 30 something woman becomes fixated on her married sometimes lover and his other sometimes lover. She cyber stalks these people obsessively as her hobby.

Sheena Patel can write. There is no question of that. Her observations about the world around her is so on point and she sees the most microscopic detail that we might notice but can't actually put into words. The MC is self-aware but unashamed, obsessed but cool about it, and she basically just gets by doing exactly as she wants.

The writing is brilliant, I'm just not that into a non-plot driven type of book. What was the point to all the worldly observations about race, materialism, financially getting by vs wealth, etc. The book ended pretty abruptly too, and I felt this was just a collection of essays about the same few things, some told out of order, just because.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because the writing was admittedly amazing. Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this. I will pick up her next novel to see if I will like it more.

I’m sorry to say that I DNF this at 15%. I initially liked the idea that there were no specifics on the characters (giving the “he who shall not be named” vibe) but it made it difficult to connect with the story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for honest review.

I'm a Fan has many of the things that make a good literary fiction in my opinion, approaching social and psychological issues in a way that seems organic, beautifully constructed sentences (so many quotable lines here seriously), a snappy structure (vignettes) and an engaging main character.

I tend to be leery or books that deal with influencers because I often find them completely out of touch and only offering a very caricatural image of them that completely lacks depth or realism, here the portrayal was more interesting (mostly because it didn't center on making the figure of the influencer into a despicably entitled shallow figure worthy of nothing but scorn). The approach to power dynamics and race is also equally careful, lucid, and honest. The choice to not name the characters also works very nicely here forcing you to consider them first as part of dynamics and through their relationships to one another it also doubles as an invitation to think about parasocial relationships and how little we truly know of people we see and sometimes of people we are invested in in that not quite a part of their lives way. All of this culminate in a bleakish but intense read.

This book came up in my recommendations because I loved Second Place by Rachel Cusk and I think the recommendation was pretty spot on, I rarely say "perfect for fans of..." but in this case I'll second the recommendation I have received.

It gets a 4.5 rounded up from me.

A tremendous novel, full of biting descriptions, sharp analytical political dissections, and myriad discussions of relationship power dynamics and fandom. This novel seems all over the place, yet, by the end, shows a thematic cohesion that is excellent. I liked the sections that shifted in topic. Not hard to follow at all. And allowed a depth that moved us out of a purely experiential novel. Satirical, self-reflexive, and yet, realistic - there, I’ve done it in threes again - sorry- but I really thought this was something different and important. Could say more, but then, as I can only see through "whiteness", my thoughts aren’t really as important as I might think, are they? Patel has hit nerves and challenged major ways of thinking through this short novel.

As another reviewer so eloquently said “I was not a fan”.

I wanted to like this. It sounded so good. I like an unhinged main character as much as the next person but this was just too all over the place for me. I struggled finishing it and I dreaded even picking it up.

The writing style was a miss for me. None of the characters were in any way redeemable. I’m glad it was a short book.

I expected more based on the description. I was disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Quite different! I enjoyed the stream of consciousness writing style aspect of this novel. The author’s thoughts captivated me at certain moments. It was a highly addictive read. I also felt annoyed at her manipulative actions yet at moments I empathized with her. Overall a great thriller that will frustrate you, yet keep you turning the pages because you want to see where things will lead.


*Thanks to Penguin Random House Canada & NetGalley for this Ebook in exchange for my honest review. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This one was not for me. Maybe I read it wrong, but I did not like the main character AT ALL and I didn't find that the story really hooked me. I would try future books by this author, I just really disliked this one.

This was a different kind of book for me. I enjoyed the anonymous characters. Only one name was ever mentioned and she wasn't a main character. I found this unique. The look into what one thinks is love but actually comes across as obsession to others is the main focus of this novel. An interesting debut.

I absolutely devoured this book. I’m A Fan is insightful and sharp and weird as hell. I found the timeline of events a little confusing but ultimately I could have kept reading the narrator’s thoughts and experiences for so much longer, which I think was kind of the point.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the e-ARC!

I struggled with this book, and ultimately, did not finish it. Describing characters instead of naming them made the text harder to follow. The long sentences also made the book harder to read. I was not a fan of the graphic sex and the focus on affairs. Maybe this book was just not for me.

Not sure how I feel about this one. It is definitely one of the strangest books I've ever read. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.

This was not an enjoyable read but a timely and important one! It was dark, twisty and uncomfortable and highlighted the challenges of social media. Not my idea of a love story and I couldn't look away. Not naming the characters in the traditional way was a powerful move. I look forward (with slight trepidation) to see what Sheena Patel puts forward next!

At the start of the book, it didn't bother me that the narrator was nameless, nor did it bother me that none of the characters had names either. But it soon started to irritate me that the other characters remained nameless. I considered DNFing the book (which I almost never do), and then wound up finishing the book in just over one sitting.

There are some really interesting comments on fame, an inability to commit, misogyny and quite a bit more. That was fascinating. I might have liked the book...? I'm just not really sure. It was brilliant in bits. Annoying in bits. Perhaps it was the language that put me off more than anything. Well, and the graphic references to sex. I'm never a fan of that.

I went into this with an open mind but it was hard to get through the book.

A lot of the book feels like fan fiction of the TV series You written from woman’s perspective which could be intriguing but for me misses the mark because it feels like the main character is just stuck in an endless loop and the material felt repetitive.

There is the bones of a good story but I feel like this could have been better served if written as a short story rather than a novel.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGallery who provided this eArc in exchange for my honest opinion

I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel is a novel of obsession that is told entirely from the narrator's perspective in a viscerally honest, often raw, stream of consciousness. Our unnamed narrator is stalking a woman on the internet who is sleeping with the same man, as well as another influencer who is yet another of the cheater's lovers. It is a complex entanglement to say the least, and our narrator projects her musings of race, class, and the imbalance of power in an unfiltered dialogue that is often startling in its perceptiveness.

This is a quick, powerful read that promises to make waves as an original debut. I predict that we will be hearing much more from Ms Patel as she stakes her place in the literary landscape.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an ARC.

Synopsis (from Netgalley, the provider of the book to review)
******************************************************
 I stalk a woman on the internet who is sleeping with the same man as I am.

The unnamed narrator in I’m a Fan is obsessed; obsessed with the married man she is sleeping with and with one of his other lovers who is an influencer.

Through the prism of this unequal, unfaithful relationship, she examines the complexities of desire and privilege. With an unforgiving eye, the narrator relentlessly dissects the behaviour of all involved in the entanglement, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world. I’m a Fan offers an incandescent critique of class, race, social media, patriarchy’s hold on us, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.

In this gripping debut, Sheena Patel announces herself as a dynamic new voice in literature, capable of rendering a rollercoaster of emotions viscerally on the page.

Influencers and content creators crack me up…I mean who seriously gives a darn about TikTok videos? Podcasts? I mean who doesn’t have a podcast? I follow a lot of famous cats 🐈‍⬛🐈 but they generally don’t have pawed-casts….yes, sometimes the jokes write themselves.

The book was…okay. I expected a lot more from its description but it was far from gripping. It rarely held my interest despite its promise of " incandescent critique of class, race, social media, patriarchy’s hold on us, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed." Ummm...okay. Maybe I have aged out of this kind of book???

Maybe you will like it - I did not. (But I did tell NetGalley that I would be honest in my reviews and occasionally it backfires!)