Idol: The must-read, addictive and compulsive book club thriller 2022

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Louise's first novel for adults, Almost Love , was published in 2018, followed shortly by The Surface Breaks , her feminist re-imagining of The Little Mermaid . This is a clever, zeitgiesty read, which will play with your emotions as if they were scrabble tiles and give you characters that you love then hate on the turn of a page but you won't be able to stop reading. The essay goes viral but when her best friend Lisa contacts her to say that she remembers things about that night very differently, who is telling the truth? We’ve constructed this abusive society that loves to build up women only to tear them down and pits women against each other, generationally, sexually, and competitively. For all the millions that she is meant to be worth, I just could not picture this actually happening.

Unfortunately none of the main characters appealed to me in any way and I did find their behaviour frustrating and, at times, repetitive. There's an interesting yin yang in my feelings about Idol - written by an author who in her previous novels, especially Asking For It, has always challenged my world views and had me thinking long into the night about the narrative she has presented. That was one of the most emotionally difficult books I’ve ever read, and it really felt like reading about a real life experience.With everything at stake, what will happen and what will become of Samantha and whose account is the truth or is there more than one truth? Essentially this is a story about the subjectivity of memory and the curation and manipulation of the past to spin a suitable narrative.

We often place unrealistic expectations on "influencers", expect them to be perfect, and far too many people delight in tearing them down when it turns out they weren't as perfect as they were pretending to be.There were some great moments in this when we see how Sam's following is mostly white young women (but that's not her fault) and she receives criticism from BIPOC influencers in the same sphere for her cultural appropriation when it comes to the type of practices she preaches which seem to be a mixture of different faiths and organisations.

I had no empathy for any one person, which was unexpected as I thought I’d be rooting for either Lisa or Samantha. So, the issue of consent is raised in this enjoyable tale that captures the modern world of social media and the online fame game.Her books are bestsellers, she set up a 'spiritual' lifestyle brand Shakti, her podcasts regularly top the charts and there has even been a Netflix documentary about her. Fresh off the press is an essay she opened describing her formative sexual relationship with her best friend. There’s an imbalance of power because those with huge platforms have more power in which to tell a story.

O’Neill is asking us, gently but persistently: “are people like Sam Miller rotten from the start, and that is what draws them to influencing, or does the influencing rot them from within? It took inspiration from the real life Steubenville rape case but set the story in Ireland, and told from the perspective of the victim who struggles to label what happened to her as rape, and internalises the shame and blame.

I think it's a timely story in lots of ways, not least of which because of the public fall of a guru or two we've seen in the past couple of years, but also as we navigate this new-ish world of social media and celebrity being so. Miller is absolutely obsessed with her past and her relationship with her best friend Lisa and ex-boyfriend.