The entire plot is that a girl meets a boy in Berlin, they move in together in New York. She hears that he gets killed, she moves to Berlin, and spends a lot of time on the internet and making up fake stories about herself. Nothing happens! It is mindless drivel about random thoughts that go through her head. There are no real feelings, the girl is so apathetic it is a wonder she gets out of bed. The ending is probably supposed to be a twist, but by then nobody cares.

The main character lies sleepless at night checking her boyfriends phone..when she discovers, not an affair, but a conspiracy theorist. The story continues as a whirlwind after this, felt like I have taken on a crazy, slightly absurd flight, when in reality this is our present. I have been looking forward to reading a book about online life and how social media affects us, the endless scrolling, the interactions online and how we essentially become internalised due to the nature of the new relationships. Truly the book of the moment, I would say. I don't know if it will stand the test of time, but I thought it was absolutely on point and sharp. Of course this yet again one point of view, but regardless a funny and a clever one!

I found this book incredibly fresh, funny and I always love a stream-of-consciousness writing style.

Thank you @4thestatebooks and @wmcollinsbooks for the e-copy.

Our unnamed female narrator discovers that her boyfriend appears to be operating a popular Instagram account full of conspiracy theories. As she begins to plan his dumping, something truly unprecedented happens and she flees to Berlin to start a new life and figure herself out in the crazy, terrifying world full of fakery and suspicion.

Although I could tell that this book was well written, the whole thing takes place in our protagonist's head in a stream of consciousness style, which gets incredibly boring after a while. She is painfully insecure and to be honest, I didn't really feel much development or change in her as a person. I didn't really like her and therefore I actively found myself thinking of other things while my eyes scanned the words.

I did enjoy the parts where our narrator delves into dating apps though, as they were full of wit and honesty.
It has some themes that are very of today -Trump's election, fake news, social media and forging your own identity- but I couldn't help but feel it could have been executed in a more engaging way.

Unique premise and very smart writing but it's certainly not for everyone!

FAKE ACCOUNTS starts with an explosion, and then kinda meanders its way to an unexpected conclusion by way of Berlin, New York, the Women's March, the astrological chart, and a heck of a lot of Tinder. I loved that opening and I think I was expecting more of an identity-based thriller. Instead, this is a meditation on the self, and self online, and the new ways in which we can present ourselves, our lives, our achievements, etc, to the world both online and IRL. What is truth, anymore? Who are we outside of of Insta accounts? Lauren Oyler's observations are on the money when it comes to self-deception and our online worlds. I had a few embarrassing sighs of recognition... I didn't find myself as compelled throughout the book as I was at the beginning, but Oyler's voice here is complex and strong and maintains engagement.

Honestly there's nothing I love more than a book that has such mixed reviews - this seems to be a proper 'love it or hate it' book and I'm so pleased I'm the former!

This is the sort of book I love - it's clever, funny, relatable and is written in such a random, slightly chaotic stream-of-consciousness style. I can absolutely understand why this isn't everyone's cup of tea. But for me this is not only an interesting storyline mixed with a VERY relatable protagonist, but it's a really intelligent and witty look at social media, identity and the current zeitgeist. Although the story centres around a woman finding out her boyfriend is a secret conspiracy theorist, it's really much more than that. That's the hook but it's surrounded by hilarious anecdotes and random thoughts that make this book really enjoyable.

It also included my favourite line in a book ever (the only time I've used my Kindle notes feature) - "I wished that only people I wanted to talk to me would talk to me, and only when I wanted". I think this many times a day so it was nice to see it in print.

I am really sorry but I did not enjoy this book I am even surprised I finished it.

I was looking forward to reading it expecting it to be really good but found it did not live up to the expectations.

The only thing I can say the end was a bit of a surprise.

A woman snoops into her boy friend's phone and finds that he is a conspiracy theorist and even has a secret Instagram account. This was one of my highly anticipated novels of the year. But it did not impress me as much as I hoped it would. While I think this is a great premise, Oyer's monologues and commentary did not appeal to me. I might give this another try later in the year because I have high hopes, and want to rule out the possibility that I was not in the right mind for the read. Otherwise, probably I am not the target audience for the book

Articulates acerbically the experience of life in the internet age, and participating in the addictive attention loop that social media platforms have created. It is wry and satirises the performative aspects of social media: the narrator is hyperaware of an audience, real or imagined—how she is being perceived, and whether she is being noticed or thought or talked about—which is believable, but also becomes slightly tedious. The book is rather more voice-driven than plot-driven, although the initial premise is interesting.

This was a great book in the current times with political conspiracies quite high and Qanon all happening at the moment. I thought this book was a fun read, liked the travel side to it and I really enjoyed it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I really liked the concept of this book, but I couldn't get on with the writing style so it didn't turn out to be my cup of tea. However, I can see what Oyler is trying to do and it did skewer our modern preoccupation with social media and appearances. Just not for me, but I'm sure it'll find an audience.

This was an interesting read, although definitely a strange tale. I'm an older person now so don't always gel with young adult characters but I don't think we were meant to like her and I certainly found her annoying and selfish. She created a narrative of her life telling lies and I always read her version of the events with scepticism. I enjoyed the parts about recent times covering the trump election and protests. Very odd

This is a very hard book to review, because it is so complex. And I get how that might put people off of it, because there is a line to toe between a book being smart and book trying so hard to be smart that it fails to have any sort of depth at all. Fake Accounts is, in my opinion, a book that tries to be smart and succeeds at being just that. The premise hangs on the hook of our narrator finding out her boyfriend is a conspiracy theorist online, but this book is not really about that. 

What it is is a very meta novel about living and pretending online, about the personas we construct online, and how we engage with the internet and our selfhood on it. It's a satirical and funny critique and outlook on feminism, literature, social media, and generally identity in the digital age. It's very current and it's very sharp, and I quite enjoyed it. The narrative voice and style are very wry and dry at times, with a narrator that is unreliable at times, but also incredibly self-aware. The narrator often performs different identities and then explores different themes through them. The book and the narrative itself are also very performative - there's a chorus of ex-boyfriends, the narrator often breaks the fourth wall, and takes on different stylistic choices as to mock writers. I particularly enjoyed the discussions around white feminism in here and the ways we consume and interact with the constant news cycle we are exposed to. 

My one grievance with this is that the style this is written in gets quite tiresome. It took me 10 days to finish this relatively short novel. It requires a lot from the reader, so it gets overwhelming and borderline annoying at times. Also, it felt a bit repetitive in certain moments, which again, I attribute to the way it is written, in an almost frantic style of endless stream of critique. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this - it is scathing, it's smart and funny and I think it will inspire a lot of discourse and be a generally divisive book. Cannot wait to see how everyone likes it!

Fake Accounts is an acutely observed examination of our online identities, the emotional dissonance of online life and the part the internet plays in our daily lives. It follows an unnamed narrator, a New York-based blogger for a feminist website, who, in the run-up to Donald Trump’s 2016 inauguration, discovers that the boyfriend she met during a Berlin pub crawl is secretly a very popular, influential and anonymous social-media conspiracy theorist. She finds this disturbing discovery by sneaking a look at his mobile phone one evening while he's sleeping soundly beside her. Felix has always been reserved and distant as though his mind was elsewhere and now she knows why. From his secret Instagram ­account in which he posts alt-right conspiracy ­theories and memes of Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Jacob Rothschild she realises that the man she thought she knew is actually a complete stranger. She begins to consider the most appropriate way to dump him; she had been considering it long before she discovered his dirty online dealings but that was effectively the nail in the coffin with regard to their romance. She travels, as planned for some time, to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. but before she can end their relationship she is informed a by phone call that Felix has been killed in a bike accident. Taking away the satisfaction she would've felt while ending it with a man espousing such disgusting views.

Feeling lost she resigns from her job and moves to Berlin where she begins creating a fabricated life where she lies to men on dating sites, the mother of the twins who she nannies for and even the German government. This is compulsive and captivating ripped-from-the-headlines story and is both incisive and prescient. It highlights the issues of identity and the role truth and lies play in understanding a person but ultimately this is a book that explores how online identities and real-life ones interact; in some people, they can be almost identical, in others they can be so different that it comes across as two different people altogether. The anonymity of online interaction is what makes an individual feel they can lie about themselves and who they are, and we can have two distinct personalities - one for the real world and another for online without much issue. In a stream of consciousness style, Oyler pens a timely and richly woven story that's written in an often snarky manner. I do think that about 100 pages could've been cut out without impacting the plot at all as Oyler tends to go off on irrelevant tangents, and it does sometimes get tedious due to this; it could've been much tauter and more tightly plotted with the filler kicked to the curb. That said, I found this a quick, entertaining and interesting read with plenty of twists and misdirection and enough going on to keep you turning the pages well into the night. It authentically captures the claustrophobia of online lives and the dilemmas of online interaction.

I was so excited for this, but I just found it exhausting. There were a lot of clever lines but as the narrator says herself there wasn't much originality in them.

I wanted the razor sharpness of Oyler's criticism and sadly I just didn't find that. Part of the issue is a long-winded narrator who is well written but just a bit too much. There's a knowingness to the writing around the long-windedness when she says my ex boyfriends said I take too long to tell stories. However, this seemed like knowing it was annoying and continuing anyway, which is ballsy but ultimately wasn't for me.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Social media is quite a common topic for novels and personal essays at the moment and I’m always intrigued by works that interrogate the disparity between people’s online lives and their real selves.

I agree with the other reviewers who stated that Fake Accounts is longer than it needs to be. I have just finished No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, which also focuses on Online culture, but is a lot more succinct. However, I did enjoy Oyler’s premise, and there are some witty lines. I would still recommend this novel to anyone who has an interest in critiquing social media and the fact that everyone can choose how to present themselves online.

One unnamed narrator. Two cities with cult followings. One mediocre white man carting his privilege about. One conspiracy theory Instagram account. One lost woman seeking validation. Numerous dates under false personas. One extended piece of performance art come con artistry gone wrong. A lot of Twitter. sound like your kind of thing?

Oyler uses these vague plot points above, to form some sort of linear narrative that at a surface level appears to be a mundane millennial escapade around Berlin. It’s full of clever quips and sharp attention to detail, but it’s also nothing like a novel at all.

She has this vessel in place, to hold her collection of thoughts about current pop culture, politics and internet discourse. She’s mouthing her narrator as if it may be her? Or not? The whiff of internet speak runs strong, our characters are fluent in it. They collide over performances of themselves, who can fabricate an authentic identity the best? It all ends in a wink, the nod of co conspirators, weren’t you in on it too?

This was an interesting premise for a novel and this uncovering of a secret side of a partner is what made me request Fake Accounts from Netgalley. I did enjoy the format of this book, which felt like a series of blog posts (I think was intentional, as the unnamed narrator is a content producer for a website) although it did slide a bit too much into Carrie Brawshaw-esque inner monologue at times, which I found distracting from the story and a bit boring. I liked her decision to move to Berlin and take on different personalities when she went on dates with men that she met via a dating app, imitating her boyfriend's duplicitous nature and making a point of "you can be whoever you want to be on the internet".

I found some of the wry observations of people quite well-drawn and in some parts the writing is funny - but it's not laugh-out-loud hilarious. The narrator is hard to warm to as she doesn't give away much information about herself: friends are seldom named and she doesn't seem to be that close to her family (I would definitely mention it to my mum if I was going to move to another country!) but she has an interesting voice and I liked reading from her perspective. The ending had a good twist (I won't spoil it here!) and overall I would recommend this as a good book club read, as it will be one that gets everyone talking!

Provocative right out of the headlines.A book about the image we live in our daily lives and the hidden life we live on line.Funny thoughtful well written involving a debut novel a book that will get a lot of attention,#netgalley#4thestatebooks

A very contemporary story of how we are one person in life and a totally different person online, and how we do so well to hide one from another. Until we get found out. Fabulous read.

I'm baffled about what this book was trying to be. It rambles here, there and everywhere. It invests WAY too many pages in talking about nothing in particular. It starts a story and then doesn't really finish it off. It reads like somebody had too many ideas and couldn't be bothered to structure them in a way that would enable the reader to get the point.

The unnamed narrator delivers the whole book in the first person and honestly, there were times that I wondered if this was really fiction or just a really poorly edited memoir. There are moments that made me laugh and had me highlighting quotes, but sadly, they were so few and far between. The book started with an interesting premise - that a girl finds out her seemingly 'normal' pleasant boyfriend is an undercover conspiracy theorist. She's going to dump him but fate gets in the way. I had imagined some interesting experiments that could have been done with his accounts but they didn't come through. We get a fun detour to the post-Inauguration Trump protest rally with all the women in cat hats which I quite enjoyed but I was sick of her Berlin perambulations after the first visit and losing the will to keep going during the second.

There was nothing about the protagonist that made me feel even a tiny connection to her. I didn't understand/sympathise/empathise with any of her actions. I didn't get the point of the book at all. I'm sorry - I wish I could have seen the good in this because I gave it several hours of my attention but I will remember just about nothing about it a week from now. It's shallow and instantly forgettable.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.