Influencer Thriller in ‘You Will Never Be Me’

I was thrilled to get a copy of Jesse Q Sutanto’s upcoming novel, You Will Never Be Me! You already know I love influencer drama in fiction, and a good twisted friendship thriller, and basically everything Jesse Q Sutanto writes, and the combination didn’t disappoint!

You Will Never Be Me is a pageturning thriller about two influencer friends/rivals, but I also found interesting themes about online identity.

I previously read Sutanto’s YA novel Didn’t See That Coming, about high school students, online gaming, and identity. The two novels have wildly different plots and vibes, but there’s a similar exploration of online and offline identities. In Didn’t See That Coming, teen gamer Kiki gets sick of the online harassment as a girl playing a fighting game, so she makes a new character under a male name. Not exactly to deceive others, just to be able to play without harassment. When she strikes up a friendship with another player, her offline identity and her online identity threaten their very real friendship.

You Will Never Be Me explores some of the same questions about the dissonance between online and offline. Influencers Mer and Aspen curate their lives for their online followers. Ok, curate may be an euphemism, the story reveals lots of faking it for the ‘gram.  Motherhood influencer Aspen cooks photogenic but flavorless meals for her adorable kids (and her terrible husband, Ben), she bribes her kids to be adorable for the camera, and she secretly feeds her children grocery store fare. Motherhood influencing is her fulltime job, so she’s constantly maintaining the brand. There’s a lot of tension from Aspen as she worries that someone will uncover her secret, even though these seem pretty mild so far.

When this shocking truth came out to the followers, though, I was sort of surprised. Surely we all see those gorgeous Insta reels and know they’re fake, right? If not entirely fake, at least carefully edited, filtered, and exaggerated for effect.

Quinn Morgendorffer, the OG of GRWM Filters

Even though I didn’t think worries about organic recipes or kid’s clothes were particularly high stakes (yet… that part’s coming!), this raises interesting ideas about the performed lives of influencers. Influencing has the same power of reality TV for me, that idea that it’s showing real people and real events, but also highly edited at the same time. The novel looks at this idea of living a curated life, carefully being the right kind of Asian, the right kind of mother, the right kind of effortlessly perfect, with a curated streak of imperfection for authenticity!

The story is told in alternating chapters from Meredith and Aspen’s viewpoints. This style is usually not my favorite in thrillers, mostly because it often relies on the Unspeakable Secret Plot Device, referencing the terrible thing that no one can even know, and then swaps for a new narrator.  But here, I think You Will Never Be Me is playing with that trope, because after all Aspen’s anxiety over her dark secret of feeding her kids upscale grocery-store food, after that, when Aspen has a real secret to keep hidden, she’s practical and not dramatic at all.

Both perspectives, Aspen and Meredith, were entertaining, even though they were both unlikably self-centered. I tend to enjoy an unlikable female protagonist, especially when she has a clear, believable motive for all her unlikable, unrelatable actions. Here, we see both women put so much time and effort into their influencer status, and see their anxiety that they might lose it. It’s not a creative hobby for them, they’re not enjoying coming up with new or creative ideas (Mer even steals Instagram Reel ideas from Aspen), it’s 100% work, with deadlines, constant pressure, and networking requirements.

The motivation works because they’re both just so very committed to being influencers. Women characters aren’t usually permitted to be unlikable and single-minded about their success, unless they’re mean-boss side character (Mossa, in The Mimicking of Known Successes and The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, has the same single-minded focus on her career, at the expense of personal relationships. Of course, Mossa is a wildly different, way-more-likeable character in a wildly different genre, but it still stands out to me because it’s unusual for a female protag to focus intensely on career success.)

The conflict comes because Mer, who was a successful influencer first, showed Aspen how to establish her brand and grow her platforms. She remade @RyleebelleSings as Aspen. After marriage and adorable twins, though, Aspen’s overtaking Meredith, and doesn’t seem to remember who built her up. This thriller has hacking (the modern kind with synced iDevices), stalking, influencer posturing, and a best friendship turned evil. I enjoyed the misdirections a lot, mostly because Sutanto is great at playing with genre expectations. I read a lot of thrillers, and I can get a little annoyed when I feel like the resolution is too obvious. (I don’t mean  foreshadowing — I love foreshadowing and hints! I mean the genre-aware obvious ending, when the book follows a thriller pattern too closely.) The resolution of You Will Never Be Me was not obvious at all, and I actually wasn’t even sure what kind of ending I was hoping for! Our murderer was so heartlessly manipulative, but I was also weirdly impressed with her highly practical plans. The Insta Lives were so high stakes! Without a hint or a spoiler, I’ll say the ending is satisfying and solid.

Fans of this one will enjoy Amanda Jayatissa’s You’re Invited, another story of ex-besties, layers of lies, and social media influencing, set at a lavish Sri Lankan wedding, and Social Creature, a thriller about twisted friendship, jealousy, and social media alibis, set in Manhattan.

You Will Never Be Me, by Jesse Q. Sutanto, will be published by Berkley on August 20, 2024. I received an advance copy of this book to review. Opinions and reactions on my book blog are my own, as always.